


Under the Boardwalk

by sunburst



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Humor, Investigations, M/M, Minor Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Mystery, Plotty, Recreational Drug Use, duh its the 70s babey, overusage of the word groovy, super slightly mentioned jeongcheol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24998797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunburst/pseuds/sunburst
Summary: The year is 1970. Hansol is an easygoing private eye whose ex Seungkwan comes strolling back into his life, then promptly goes missing. In the subsequent investigation he digs up a whole lot more than he’d bargained for.
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Chwe Hansol | Vernon
Comments: 91
Kudos: 93





	1. Here's the Skinny, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> this is lots of inherent vice, the nice guys/long goodbye/big lebowski/etc, many grey morals and ridiculous escapades etc. obv everything is fiction!! 
> 
> also here is a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21ctpJomCNLWGl03KTDBeo?si=52zT4qnBRja8YlcGZ2d7Bg)!

It began on a Friday. 

The night was ripe and lively with surfers egging each other on, waves crashing onto the sand, the smell of potheads and hefty thoughts and traffic sliding in and out. Same as the winding down of any old late July week. 

Hansol was watching reruns of The Flintstones, a joint and three and a half beers down, celebrating the termination of his biggest case yet. He was, for once, grateful to be alone. 

His mom had almost put a search party out on him seeing as he’d gone radio silent the last three months. Something he hadn’t done since he’d first dropped out of college. Only this time he’d had a valid reason: that aforementioned big case. Missing actress, scorned lover, reels set on fire. Real juicy.

And, most important of all, a stingy director who didn’t feel like paying full-price for an established detective with a good reputation, so he’d hired Hansol instead. 

Well, he’d successfully detangled all the tricky threads all right. The director had sent his thanks by announcing to the paparazzi buzzing around Velasquez Beach, “That young new PI Hansol Chwe may look like a spaced-out hippie, but damned if he don’t have some kind of stoner seventh sense for sleuthing.” 

Well, wouldn’t ya know, it made for catchy titles, those four S’s. 

Upon reading one such article, his mom had called and demanded him back on counter duty at the store on Friday nights and weekends so she could keep an eye on him and his habits. (Non-existent habits, by the way. Compared to some others on the boardwalk, he was pretty damn square.) Regardless, he’d dodged the wrath by promising her a visit at the store later on. Trouble was, Hansol wasn’t so great at keeping his store-related promises these days.

He thought of those sour teenaged summer nights stuffed into a _Chwe Home Goods_ polo, his bountiful hair forcefully gelled back thanks to dear old Appa, gear of a real straight-world persuasion. While all his friends had been out at Country Joe and the Fish shows or getting high with Grateful Dead groupies, he was stuck counting coins to the tune of pre-war Trot flip sides on the family’s dinky Spear Tone.

Thank god for college, for dropping out of college, for being roped into starting his very own private eye business.

Well, it wasn’t like he’d exactly started out printing money, but he eventually did save up enough to rent a shack of his own on the edge of the boardwalk. Of course back then it was him-and-Seungkwan’s shack. 

But that was a whole different story.

It was walking weather that particular Friday, not as overbearing as the summer swell had been in the weeks previous. The kind of atmosphere the surfers really dug. If you were down on the boardwalk and you stayed quiet you could almost sense the ocean currents and the faraway people on the gentle breeze. Hansol included. 

If he closed his eyes, under the bumbling staticky tones of Fred Flinstone he could hear the beachgoers all intertwined together outside, whooping and talking and laughing and making their way towards the water. It almost made him want to seek it out. Stroll out to the mecca of the West, relearn for himself the things all the hippies knew. 

He turned sleepily to look for the glint of the sea. Instead, his gaze landed on a silhouette standing at the doorway.

He damn near jumped out his skin in surprise.

“I got a gun,” Hansol warbled, plastered to the futon. First off that was a complete lie, and second off the shadow at the door was very quickly growing bigger… No. Not growing bigger. Getting closer. Right...?

It grew some solid pale definition and Hansol squinted. Couldn’t be. No way. His mouth betrayed him. 

“Seungkwan? That you?”

“Thinks he’s tripping?”

Hansol’s chest reverberated. That sure was Seungkwan’s voice. Seemed made out of steel. Byproduct of the supposed recent vocal practice maybe… 

He snapped the television off and stared harder. 

Seungkwan shifted into the soft beam of the streetlight outside. He was in a pink button-down that looked designer, and his hair was shorter than Hansol remembered and pin-straight. His slender jaw was set in some approximation of stubbornness. 

He looked great. Clean. Healthy. Beautiful.

Hansol blinked, still deciding if it wasn’t just a luminous trick of the night. The moment seemed practically holy somehow.

“It’s me, bong brain. Gonna let me in or what?”

“Well hullo there stranger,” he murmured, smiling. That was Seungkwan all right. “Didn’t recognize ya. Come on in, it’s unlocked.” 

He looked down self consciously at his board shorts and threadbare Bonzo Dog Band T-shirt. In the process, he realized there was still the burnt-out debris of ashes and the crumpled beer cans on the coffee table. He swept it towards himself and the mess settled in a pathetic heap on the carpeting. 

With deep regret, he looked up to see that Seungkwan was close, now, looking anywhere but at Hansol. 

“Place sure hasn’t changed much,” Seungkwan said, wrinkling his nose at the macrame hanging planters and multicolored shag rugs. Familiar sardonic defense. 

His face was awful hard to translate though. Could’ve been anywhere from shy to angry, and Hansol would be none the wiser. Up real close, there were shadows under his eyes. 

Hansol wondered, distant, if the singing career Seungkwan had placed all his bets on was living up to all that he’d thought it would be. 

The thought hung like smoke in a locked car. His head felt stuffed full with the distant tide of memories and rotten old promises threatening to lap him up. He shook himself free of the haze and stood. 

So strange, to see Seungkwan in that clean-pressed silk shirt like some righteous choir boy.

“What’re you _wearing?_ Sorry. Meant— want a beer? Or— somethin?” 

It was increasingly hard to make sense over the drumming of his own pulse. He could’ve been angry, bitter, whatever, but it was hard at the moment to do just that, what with Seungkwan standing right there. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m in a real preppy package these days, I know,” Seungkwan muttered, offering a self-deprecating smile. “I don’t need anything to drink. It’s okay.”

He thought he read something tender in Seungkwan’s eyes, but he wasn’t sure. He sat back down, heavy, leaned forwards on his elbows. Seungkwan followed suit.

“So…” 

Hansol sighed, pushing his bandana back from where it was slipping down on his forehead. This was a recurring sight, him and Seungkwan inches apart on a Friday night, but it was all out of whack right now and he was off balance. He was trying not to reveal the surprise or the soft fond warmth that had come welling up in him just by seeing Seungkwan’s face. 

“What brings you here on this fine evening up outta the flatlands? Must be some real special occasion. Six month anniversary of you skippin out?”

Usually Seungkwan would’ve snorted or rolled his eyes or something. Back then he was so loose, simple, easy to read. 

Now he just stared, his face quiet and glowing, his eyes a difficult storm. Something had changed inside of him. 

“You okay?” Hansol asked softly, tugging at his earlobes, trying his best not to just lean forward into Seungkwan. His throat was itching but he’d swept the half-full can of Coors off the table along with the rest of the trash and now it was slowly seeping out into his socks. Gross.

“Sollie, I’m in some bad, bad shit,” Seungkwan said finally, real slow. In the dim night filtering through the window he was tinted all indigo. His eyes still the same. His mouth twitching down, slight. 

He was being serious, which had always been pretty scary to see. 

“Oh, groovy,” Hansol said, sucking a breath in. Strictly business then. He tried not to look too put out. His head was still swimming and things had a shimmering unreal quality. 

Plus, he was starting to feel nervous. The way Seungkwan kept glancing around with his big eyes, like he was scared someone was watching in on them, wasn’t helping. 

“Details.”

“It’s heavy.”

“I got time. Lay it on me.”

“Alright. There’s this guy.”

Uh oh. This guy, in what sense, exactly? Hansol never kept up with the tabloids. Maybe it was common knowledge on the boardwalk, but he didn’t let on. 

“Okay, and…”

“He’s rich.”

“How rich?”

“Well. He’s Seungcheol Choi.”

Hansol was suddenly real grateful he wasn’t nursing a beer because he would’ve for sure bowled it over and fucked the carpet up even more. “Scuse me? Did I fuckin hear that right? _Seungcheol Choi?"_

Seungkwan shifted from side to side, wary.

“Oh, don’t give me that. Just because he has money doesn’t mean he can’t be a good person. Hansol, listen to me. He’s good, he’s a friend. But…” he shook his head. “He’s mixed up in some— some real heavy shit. He’s trying to get away from it all. I mean, literally.”

“Literally how?” 

“He’s trying to give all his money away.”

“But…?”

“But there are people near him who don’t want him to do that.”

“Who? People?”

“Guy named Jeonghan, sleeping with him. Exclusive, so kinda serious. And there’s also his, uh, coach. Joshua.”

“Coach?”

“Like… life coach?”

“Ah…” Hansol imagined a guy with sage eyes and a beaded necklace humming and walking around barefoot. He had friends like that. He tried not to judge. “So you’re mixed up in it where, exactly?”

Seungkwan looked miserable. “It’s bad. They’re going to hire people to abduct Cheol and get him committed to some- some institution or sanatorium or something, to stop him from giving all his assets away. And they’re paying me off to shut up about it.”

Hansol stared. Numerous things he desperately wanted to ask undulated under his fuzzy tongue, threatening to spill out. So what precisely was the nature of the connection Seungkwan had with Seungcheol? Note that he’d called him _Cheol._ So that sure made them sound pretty damn close. And exactly how long had they known each other? 

Did it stretch to before the day Seungkwan had finally drifted away from him for real, caught in the push and pull of good and bad vibrations? 

But Hansol was present enough and knew those weren’t the right questions. There was only one right question. 

“How much they payin you to shut up?”

“Five.”

“K?”

Seungkwan shook his head and looked utterly despondent. “Million.”

Hansol dropped his head in his hands. Through the dense thicket of brown hair he asked, “You still tryna figure if you’re gonna take the money?”

He couldn’t see Seungkwan’s face but his tone was indignant now. “You really think that little of me these days?”

He raised his head expecting to see a familiar teasing scowl. But Seungkwan had only been putting on a brave voice. He was blank except his eyes, wide and glistening. 

He was scared, Hansol realized. That was the distant emotion that had been coming off him in waves. An alien sight. 

So that meant he wasn’t going to take the money after all. Instead he was willing to pay for the price of his knowledge. 

“Kwannie?”

“I’m not selling out,” he said, confirming Hansol’s vague intuition, his voice steady as ever. “Just so you know.”

Hansol looked for words. “Who else have you told?”

“Nobody. Just you.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Seungkwan rubbed the curve of his cheek, his tone so serious that Hansol couldn’t recognize the cadence. “Because you’ve never let me down. Ever. I trust you and I know you’re going to try and untangle this whole mess. I wanted to tell you how grateful I am, because I never did before. Before it’s too late.”

“Hey,” Hansol mumbled, confounded and alarmed at the feelings swelling in his poor neglected heart. “Don’t talk like that. Seungkwan.”

“I’m not taking the money. I’m keeping the knowledge of what they’re going to do to him. You can guess what’s going to happen to me in return.”

“Kwan. Just stay here with me. Lie low a few weeks.”

Seungkwan stood up. His face was mournful. 

“I have to go. They’ll notice I’m gone.”

“Wait.” Hansol stumbled up, tracking ash in his footsteps. “Jesus, why’re you movin so fast?”

He tripped after Seungkwan all the way outside, into the humid summer air, across the bustling street. Seungkwan was approaching a shiny red chrome convertible that looked very aerodynamic. Hansol raised his eyebrows. 

“This a Choi gift?”

“Shhh, someone might be watching. No shit it is. Who else would shell out dollars for something this overdone?” 

Before he got in the car Seungkwan turned around, his eyes sort of wild. He pulled Hansol in by the back of his neck and pressed against his mouth, warm and solid, tangible for a few spectacular seconds. He smelled like expensive cologne and something floral. He pulled away and Hansol could only stare at him, bewildered.

“Hansol, I meant what I said before,” he said. “You’ve never let me down.”

“Kwannie,” he tried again as Seungkwan swung the door open and slid in, “please, just— you can sleep on the futon or it could be like old times again—”

“Bye, Hansol.” 

Seungkwan started the car, backed out in silence and went down the incline of the road. 

Hansol watched him go helplessly, feeling real torn up about it if he was honest. In the distance there were yelps from the surfers pulled into the undertow, whistles from a few lonely hippies on the sidewalk watching Seungkwan drive away. 

Well, shit. 

He stared at the afterglow of the neon orange headlights and ran a hand through his tangled hair. He wondered how deep in the hole Seungkwan was with this Cheol character. After all he was driving around in a car owned by the man, probably in clothes bought with his money too. 

Hansol’s gaze darted around the ringing night, anxious. He asked himself how many people on the street were really innocent bystanders, how many were beholden to Choi’s real estate company. Or even were pawns to some deeper, more nefarious force.

Fortunately he wasn’t alone with his muddled paranoiac thoughts for too long. 

“Man, was that Seungkwan? I didn’t know the new EP was making him that much money,” came a wry voice from his elbow.

“Hey, Chan.”

Chan’s eyes glinted up at him, curious. He shoved his hands in his patchwork jeans. 

“It totally _was_ him! Hey, let’s go get, like, burgers or somethin. You can lay it on me.”

“Radical,” Hansol muttered, trailing after him through the shadowy boardwalk, the dim Leonine stars twinkling above them. 

Chan was one of his closest friends. Often it was kinda a funny sight, a fresh-faced just-graduated kid with an ear for trouble leading a chilled-out private investigator by the cuff of his faded army jacket. But they were a solid team. He supplied Chan with absurd escapades and good yarns in the gap years Chan was taking before college, and Chan drove him around to investigations when Hansol was feeling a little lackadaisical, or just plain alone. 

Which, let’s not mince words, was a fair amount of days. 

Chan also applied his eager listening to Hansol’s personal woes. It was he who had heard the most about Hansol’s long past with Seungkwan. Hansol could kind of remember spilling his guts out at the very burger joint they were headed to, half a year ago when whatever wonderful unreal thing they’d had together suddenly dissolved into nothing. 

“I can’t figure how it happened,” he’d kept saying to Chan that night. He was drunk off his ass and Chan was looking at him like all the wonderful things in the world were just smokescreens. “I can’t figure how it happened, man. Fuck. No warning. Here one day and gone the next. Like blowing on a candle. Real ungroovy, isn’t it?”

“What if,” Chan had asked, “what if you trace it back to the beginning? “

Well, okay, so here was how it started. Typical summer beach romance. So much of a cliche it was kind of funny. 

Three years ago— Summer of Love, and although Haight-Ashbury was up the Pacific Coast Highway, everyone could still feel the command to turn on and tune in and drop out— three years ago, Hansol had followed the command, dropped out of college and was figuring out exactly how many ways a person could get pulled under the rip current of free living. 

Seungkwan had come in on a shabby Greyhound from the flat Midwest. Regularly busked near the boardwalk, his clear, soulful voice a balm on raw skin. He was always wearing those pastel color block shirts with matching circle sunglasses and Hansol had thought he was real cute and had said as much. And Seungkwan surprised him by saying prove it, then. Or was he too cheap to put his money where his mouth was? And Hansol, who practically didn’t have a cent to his name, nicked a little fiberglass boat out on the docks and showed him a real memorable time.

They were like North and South magnets after that. Liked to sit on the beach after hours, making wry observations about the prim n proper businessman who frequented the clubs but still looked at everything with such obvious high-handedness. Hansol didn’t even have a place to stay back then, slept stretched out on the beach like so many others, but one sticky night Seungkwan invited him back to the tiny hostel room he was renting, and they ended up not even really making it to the bed, and the rest was, so to speak, history. 

A few months into it Seungkwan carefully noticed a certain potential in Hansol. Same way he always saw potential in himself, in damn near everything around him. He was like that. Always wanted the best out of people. He’d seen the way Hansol took in the world around him, impartial and calm, objective and truthful, and thought hey, you could make a career out of that. 

He’d prodded and pinched Hansol towards his current occupation and Hansol had accepted his ministrations gladly. And Hansol’s steady patient aura softened Seungkwan into the best version of himself, opening him up with care, helping him blossom. 

Eventually they began renting that tiny beach shack together, able to afford it with the money Seungkwan was starting to get from shows around town, along with Hansol’s new profession. They were two souls whose inner vibrations happened to match up perfectly, like a key in a lock. 

Until one day that, too, was slowly borne away by greater, deeper tides. Inexplicable. 

Well, who could explain something like that? Hansol couldn't. It just happened. That was it, no deeper significance needed. 

He supposed a person had a right to grow apart and drift away. Even if that drifting happened one night at random, after that person had fallen asleep next to the supposed love of their life, intertwined and content, and left by next morning to the tune of no note, no address, no footsteps. 

No nothing.

Even if, evidently, that person came drifting back carting a billionaire and some heavy baggage in their wake. 

As they ordered burgers and Hansol told Chan about Seungkwan’s abrupt strange visit, intuition flickered at the stem of his brain. Call it that infamous sleuthing seventh sense. 

Under the smooth slow murmuring of the Youngbloods telling everyone to get together, it felt like the crackle of the television behind the bar was speaking to Hansol. Directly to Hansol. 

He turned to the screen, which was blighted with static. It flickered and grew clear. It was playing an advertisement for _Choi Real Estate Development_ , according to the exceptionally groovy yellow bubble letters. 

The great heir himself appeared, big guileless eyes, dimpled smile. Hansol could see the appeal. Honestly, the guy was kinda magnetic.

On the tube Seungcheol Choi pointed and said, “Here’s the skinny, baby. Buy into a piece of Driftaway Drive estates today. Don’t miss out on this grooviest of opportunities; people would kill for a deal this fab. Can ya dig it?” 

He tilted his head, winked a knowing reassuring wink, and shot finger guns at Hansol. Strange, like he could see right through that glass screen… Hansol didn’t like it one bit. 

_This commercial produced in partnership with Fallin Flower Co_ came scrolling across the advertisement, which then cross-dissolved into a talk show. The burgers arrived but he wasn’t hungry anymore. Which was also strange. 

“Channie,” he said, “you ever get the feeling things are about to go to shit? So strong it kinda tingles? From your jaw to your temple?”

Chan lowered his burger and peered at Hansol. “I think that just, like, means you’ve been smoking too much, man.”

“Pot n kettle, no pun intended. Or… whatever that old mantra is.”

“Case in point,” Chan snorted, chowing down. But he shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I got your back, man. You think you wanna check it out?”

Chan and his deceptively careful ears often hung around the boardwalk picking underground information up like an exuberant lint roller. Turns out the location of Choi’s private residence was common knowledge among the drifters and college students who regularly picketed, protesting the bountiful human rights violations the real estate company was historically fond of. 

It wasn’t all Seungcheol’s doing. Fact of the matter was, most of it didn’t even involve him at all. Choi’s father was the one with the long bitter history with the LA land tract. Houses in low-income areas had been uprooted to make way for bigger houses. Homeless encampments had been pulled up by their roots, flowering into the latest hot commune-inspired floor plans. The slow oozing steamroller of gentrification. 

Choi the younger had a legacy that wasn’t very definite yet, having recently inherited the business, but that didn’t stop the activists from hating him on principle. 

You almost had to feel sorry for the guy. He had a sweet kind of face. Made you wonder how much misery he was hiding.

“I’ll go check it out tomorrow,” Hansol decided. “I’ll dress up. Pose as…a spiritual coach or some shit.” He saw his friend’s face, ready, eager. “You think you could help? Or—”

Chan immediately launched into his enthusiastic Elvis impression, “Let’s rock, everybody!” with a ridiculous little hip shimmy. 

“Jesus,” Hansol muttered. But he was grinning, relieved, all the same. 

  
  


Only next morning, the news came with ominous tidings. 

_"Singer-songwriter Seungkwan Boo, 22 years old, has been reported missing to the LAPD. Last sighted near the Velasquez Beach boardwalk at ten PM the night prior. If you see anyone matching this description..."_

Chan was at the door ready to bounce but Hansol’s curdled face told him enough. He caught the tail end of the report and frowned. 

“That’s heavy shit, man.”

“Gonna go for a drive, clear my head,” Hansol muttered, turning the TV off. He pushed his hair out of his forehead with his bandana, jammed his big tinted sunglasses on. “We’ll check the Choi place out tomorrow.”

“Far out.” Chan watched him trek towards the door. “Hey, this isn’t your fault, Hansol. Don’t, like, blame yourself or whatever.”

“Course not. Check ya later, kiddo.” 

But he still felt the guilt as he got into his dinged up El Camino. It settled thick as sunblock on his shoulders. 

There was also that weird seventh sense again. Just a strange intuition that something or someone was pulling strings, and he was just above-water, blind to what was really going on under the surface. 

He turned the radio to his favorite broadcast, an offshore pirate station that transmitted from a ship somewhere out there in international waters. He cranked the windows down, trying to air his funky feeling out. 

The sleepy ocean breeze swept across his cheeks. Seagulls screeched as people strolled to the boardwalk, their sandals flapping against the ground. Sun was painting the road buttery soft and sandy, everything sorta mauvey and dreamlike through his shades. Over the airwaves Jazzmasters shredded, sinister and tense like the roll of the surf. 

Seungkwan would’ve clicked his tongue and changed the station to some soul-pop girl group or whatever he was into these days. 

Hansol tried not to think so hard about it. He merged onto the freeway. The song faded out, sputtered into white noise, then the DJ’s hyped up, excited chatter. 

“If you want in on some copacetic fun, Fallin Flower is here to provide! You know what to do. This is SVT LA transmitting from out on the high seas, no pun intended, good morning to all you commuters, slackers, and old-timers. That was the Ventures with their sixty-three surf rock hit Pipeline. Hansol Chwe, you listenin in? Anonymous caller says, brotha, you’re a swimming fool.” 

Hansol choked on his own spit. 

He turned the volume down and glanced anxiously out the window, squinting at the travelers zipping past, the Porsche Turbos and paisley-trimmed Beetles. 

Had he just imagined his own name being called out from the void? Was someone watching him? Was the radio a two-way street? 

He got the sense, once more, that there was more going on than he’d ever be privy to. He wondered if he was dreaming things up out of a heavy combination of stress and substances and ex-boyfriends showing up outta nowhere. 

But then he decided the universe was presenting him with a gift. A glimpse into the beyond. 

His gaze narrowed on the road before him. Roll with it, Hansol. Swimming fool? The phrase was familiar somehow...

Ah. Right. He could recall Seungkwan saying those two words in the distant past. 

In fact if he closed his eyes Hansol could even see him draped like a sunning cat on the bed, grinning, his eyebrows raised in a kind of challenge. Swimming Fool was a hot tub joint a few minutes away, and Seungkwan was swearing it was nothing too shady. Just a little fun.

They didn’t go, ultimately, but Hansol recalled looking the place up in the yellow pages. He tried remembering the address and realized, far as he knew, he was already headed in the right direction. 

It was all lining up somehow. He was getting lucky. He wondered when that luck would run out, asked himself if it was karmic compensation for what had happened (for what was going to happen?) to Seungkwan.

A series of mobile modulars painted purple ballooned in the distance off the freeway. Terrible gaudy, real 60s hangover style. But it was calling to Hansol, sending out vibrations. He pulled off at the exit and navigated closer. 

Yeah, man, there it was alright. He tried not to feel too bugged out about it. _Swimming Fool,_ just waiting for him in massive letters of all different fonts, all of them somehow managing to be equally tacky. 

He pulled into the flat lot, which had just one other car, a dusty Ford pickup with the tire practically blown out. A sign parked against one of the buildings said in wavy feel-good letters _Drench Yourself in this Feeling!!!_ along with a big chalk drawing of a purple flower. 

Warily, Hansol stepped towards the building, following his inner ESP. Trusting himself to detangle the universe’s cat’s cradle. 

He was greeted by thick beaded curtains instead of doors. They went brightly clinking when he swept them aside. Inside, it smelled strongly of patchouli oil and incense. Some walls were naked paneled wood and some were covered in fuzzy purple carpet, and the light was scant through the thick blue smoke wafting everywhere. 

Not shady my ass, Hansol thought. 

He approached the counter, which was filled with statuettes of pop culture figures in compromising positions. He cleared his throat, pushing his sunglasses up, gaze wandering towards the almost-explicit posters along the walls. 

He wondered again why, exactly, the universe had conspired to bring him here.

“Sorry,” a level voice came from behind another layer of stringed beads.

The beads cleared to reveal a slender man with a sleek black mullet and a loud multicolored button-down, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, fairly gliding through the air. Real in tune with himself and somewhat intimidating.“How may I help you?”

“Uh…” 

“Do you have a reservation, or…” The man squinted, looked him up and down. 

Then his eyes widened in recognition. “Oh, whoa, it’s you. I was actually planning on calling later.”

“Huh…? Do I know you…?”

“You were in last week’s _Snapshoot_ for that case, I keep up with the film stuff… that whole deal with that actress Amy whats-her-name… really fascinating. It had your picture and number and everything. You looked a little out of it, but I figured if you solved that whole mess, you must be really good at what you do. Didn’t you see the article?”

“Musta missed it.” Hansol shifted, uncomfortable, feeling like there were two levels of conversation happening. “Anyway…”

“My name’s Minghao,” the man said, eyes still reticent. He stuck his elegantly tattooed arm out and Hansol shook his hand, a thick silver ring on Minghao’s pinky pressing cold into his palm. Engaged, married even, maybe?

“Huh,” Minghao murmured. “Still can’t believe you’re actually here. Like magic. You _are_ Hansol Chwe, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, man, I am… him.”

“Did you actually, like, want a hot tub or…?”

“No, no. Here cus I just got the sense…man, that’s crazy.” He shook his head, dispelling imaginary vapors and bath salts. “Got the sense there was a case somewhere around here, actually.” More proof of the universe’s secret underbelly, hidden workings. He was trying hard not to feel freaked. “Lay it on me.”

Minghao’s eyes widened. “You’re going to take the case?”

Might as well have another something on hand, one that would presumably actually pay, as a welcome distraction from the Seungkwan-shaped rabbit hole of fear and guilt and that sense of un-control. 

“Yeah, I’m down with it.”

Across from the counter Minghao exhaled. All of a sudden he looked a lot younger, kinda tired. 

“Okay. Come on back then.”

They traveled behind a few more sets of beads. Hansol was expecting more posters of half-naked people and weird figurines. But the small office Minghao strode into was pretty bare, stern, white-walled. The tragical interior design of Swimming Fool definitely wasn’t his idea, then.

Minghao sat down behind the desk and cradled a mug painted with bright psychedelic flowers. He sipped from it thoughtfully. 

Hansol sat across and dug inside his pockets for his notebook and pen.

“Said your name was Minghao…”

“Minghao Xu.”

“You married?”

“Got a boyfriend.”

“And he is…?”

“Dead.” 

Hansol glanced up from his notebook, chewing his lip. Minghao was staring into his tea like he could read his own future in the leaves.

“I’m sorry,” Hansol said. He scribbled, _Kinda Familiar Feeling._ “What was his name?”

“Mingyu. Mingyu Kim,” Minghao said. He smiled and his whole face softened. “Gyu’s a musician. Was. Played bass guitar for this psych rock band, Los Lottos. Probably haven’t heard of them, they’re pretty green. But he was really good and they were going places. Then about a month ago after a big show they… they said he’d OD’d. On smack. It was hard to… hard to believe, seeing as he was never into that kind of thing. At least, not as far as I’d known.” 

Hansol knew the look on Minghao’s face. Someone he’d thought he’d known was here one day and gone the next. It reverberated real close to home. 

“You have a picture? I might recognize him. I hang at the Ode on Wednesdays.” Lots of small-town bands played weeknights. He’d started the tradition to get Seungkwan into his kind of music. It had never quite panned out, but he still kept it up.

“Hang on a sec.” 

Minghao rolled the desk drawer open and pulled out a square Polaroid: himself with tinted sunglasses on, at a club or bar of some kind, squished close to a handsome, unfamiliar man in a denim shirt. Mingyu Kim, presumably. Tan skin, goofy grin, kind eyes. Shaggy hair bleached a sort of sandy gold. 

“He looks sweet,” was the only thing Hansol could think to say, and it was true. He felt a twinge, remembered all the pictures just like this one at home, him and Seungkwan dressed up, out drinking or dancing, awash in a naive simple joy that they’d never get back. 

But when he looked up Minghao’s face wasn’t clouded over with nostalgia. Instead it was sharp, careful. 

“Mr. Chwe,” Minghao said, “I don’t think Mingyu is really dead.”

Hansol got chills. On his pad he wrote, _FREAKY VIBES!!?_

“What makes you say that?”

“For one, I never ID’d him. They said the guitarist did, so I didn’t have to. But…see, I still haven’t closed our joint account. Couldn’t really bear to. And then, there was this check deposited into the account, three days ago.”

“How much?”

“Fifty K. And I know I didn’t deposit and forget about it. I don’t have a slip for it. And I always keep my slips.” 

Hansol raised his eyebrows, nodded. He wrote down, _Feels Pretty Ominous._

Missing boyfriends. Money being paid under the table, purchasing silence. The similarities were bugging him out. The universe was transmitting. 

“Sum’s big enough to mean something.”

“Exactly.”

“Could I borrow the picture?” Minghao nodded and Hansol slipped it into his pocket. “Real odd. Things have been goin around… honest truth, I’d keep a low profile, wouldn’t stick my neck out much if I was you. Comprende?”

“Yeah, I have some vacation hours saved up. Guess it’s time for a break.”

“Right on. You got a business card?” He slid it across the table and Hansol tucked it in his other pocket. “Radical. I’m on it like Steve and his bike.”

“How much do you charge?”

“I only charge when it’s over.” That wasn’t true, but he liked Minghao and genuinely wanted to help. 

“Wow, are you serious? Thank you so much.” 

He could tell Minghao meant it. Hansol stuck his hand out for a shake and was surprised when he was pulled into a brief, jasmine-scented hug. 

“I’ll call you soon as I find something,” Hansol promised, giving him a real smile. 

He exited the office, back again into the mystical smelling, smoky lobby. He was almost to the door, too, when a loud clinking-bead sound came from his left, where the hot tubs were. 

Someone moving towards him. 

He never found out who it was. Before he could turn and scope it out, something came down hard on the back of his head. He swung forward like a puppet jerked on a string, murmured out a dazed “Huh…?” and the world went India Ink black.

  
  


Hansol woke up outside, staring at a very blue sky. He was lying on cement. 

He could feel a lump on the back of his head the size of a Bocce ball. Before he could sit up, a long narrow face shoved itself into his vision, leaning over him like an especially gleeful, bespectacled bat. 

He recognized the upside-down head in an instant and groaned, squeezing his eyes shut, desperately trying to will himself back into peaceful oblivion.

“Well, hello, sunshine,” Detective Wonwoo Jeon said. “Come here often?”


	2. Loath to Use the C-Word

Now, listen. Hansol was aware as much as anyone else that Wonwoo wasn’t an objectively bad person. 

He was, in fact, one of the most prolific detectives in the city. He walked his goddamn talk, and what was more, he hated most of the cops he was forced to inhabit the station with and had testified at more than one significant trial. 

But what Wonwoo also took exception to was, as he so eloquently put it, wannabe baby private eyes running around Velasquez Beach, fucking with his case completion ratio. Chief among that particular species of wannabe baby private eye was, of course, Hansol. 

So the twisted game the world seemed to be playing with him had set him up for some sweet instant karma, in exchange for gifting him Minghao’s intriguing case. Wonwoo read him his rights while sitting him up, clipping cuffs to his wrists. 

“What am I even being arrested for, man,” Hansol groaned, things stretched out and Technicolor from the hit he’d taken.

“Being caught on-premises with two kilos of heroin.”

“What!” 

Then he looked around and realized he was in the parking lot of Swimming Fool, next to an ominously taped up box. 

Which hadn’t been there when he’d arrived, and was apparently packed to the brim with smack. 

Hansol scrambled for purchase. “Look, man, mellow out for a sec. I was just inside with the guy that works there, uh, Minghao Xu, I was talking to him and I came out of the back office and something hit me right on the head. And I just woke up out here. I’m not mixed up in this shit, whatever this is, swear on my life. Ask Minghao, he’ll vouch for me.”

“Right,” Wonwoo scoffed. “As if we haven’t done a clean swipe of the premises. There’s no one named _Minghao_ in a twenty-foot radius of the place.”

“Huh?”

Hansol was gripped with terror. Had the whole meeting been some waking hallucination? “Hey, Wonwoo, buddy, check my jacket pocket. Right pocket. Please, man, I’m begging you.”

“What, you want a hit of your _reefer?"_

“Come on, man. Just. Please.”

Wonwoo got the hint that something sinister was spinning in Hansol’s brain and reached inside. His long fingers closed on an object and he pulled Minghao’s Polaroid out. 

“Radical,” Hansol sighed with great relief. 

But then he realized Wonwoo was looking at the photograph like he’d recognized a ghost. 

“What?”

“Where’d you get this?” 

“I told you. Minghao Xu.” Hansol narrowed his eyes. He caught his weird feel again. The way Wonwoo’d been staring at the picture… he knew something. “Why?”

“Never mind. I’m confiscating it.”

“What? Why? You can’t do that, man!”

Wonwoo clucked his tongue and tucked the Polaroid away. 

“That’s a real bummer, baby, because far as I know, I sure can. See you at the station.”

  
  


“But you haven’t even charged him yet,” Jihoon was saying with expiring patience.

“Right on,” Hansol muttered. “Tell him, Jihoon. And tell him to give me my Polaroid back.” 

His lawyer gave him a warning kick under the table. “It’s almost been forty-eight hours. This is horse shit, Jeon, and you know it.” 

It had turned out Minghao’d left from the back entrance for lunch around the time all the shit had gone down in the parking lot. He had recently come by the station to vouch for Hansol’s alibi. 

Much to Wonwoo’s chagrin. 

Hansol knew Jeon had been working on some kind of cartel case for around two years now. If he’d thought he could bag Hansol for something like that, or at least use him to infiltrate, he musta thought Christmas had come early. 

The detective picked at his suspenders, glum. “Mr. Lee, once again, my curiosity’s been piqued. What does your particular expertise have to do with Mr. Chwe here? I understand you specialize in… what is it? _Entertainment_ law?"

“Hansol’s a family friend from way back,” Jihoon snapped, “and while you’re right I specialize in entertainment law, I passed the bar just like any other goddamn lawyer, and I can smell a case of Harass the Innocent Hippie from a mile away.” 

Hansol wanted to protest that he wasn’t even a hippie, really, he just had longish hair and loose clothes and an easygoing attitude and apparently that gave everyone the right to paint him a certain way, but Jihoon had a dangerous glint in his eye he didn’t want to be stared down with.

Wonwoo coughed. “Perhaps, Mr. Lee, I should phrase all my questions in terms of the Industry, then, to ease your comprehension.” He directed his next question at Hansol. “What do you know about rising singer-songwriter Seungkwan Boo’s recent disappearance?”

Jihoon rolled his eyes. “My client is not going to answer—”

“Excuse me?” Hansol blurted. Jihoon kicked him again. He ignored it. “What’re you implying, Jeon?” 

“Well, I know you two were together for a long while. And Boo came strolling back to your place after six months, and by next morning had seemingly vanished into thin air.”

“Yeah, he stepped in for ten minutes, he left, and then I got burgers with Chan Lee and went to sleep. You can verify it. I had nothing to do with this shit,” Hansol said, scowling. “You’re really looking at me and thinking, oh, this kid looks like a _hardened kidnapper?"_

Wonwooo smirked and scribbled something on his notepad. Jihoon made a face at Hansol and shook his head. 

“And what about Seungkwan’s well-endowed friend Seungcheol Choi? Mr. Lee, you might know him from those real estate commercials he’s recently appeared in? Has a great face for television?”

Hansol grimaced. “What about him?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?”

“I’ve been in custody, how am I s’posed to have _heard?"_

“Choi went missing last night, similar circumstances. Know anything about it?”

Ah. So there was the real heart of the poking and prodding. Hansol shook his head.

“We’ve been seeing Choi and Seungkwan together for the past few months. Common thinking on the force is, it’s all part of Choi’s strategy. Appeal to the young hip population of the Beach by buddying up to some Baez type, soulful conscience-touting people. And your ex man’s been getting just about big enough on the radio to provide that outreach.”

“Interesting theory,” Jihoon said. 

“What do you think, Hansol? You support that idea? Or do you maybe think Choi and Seungkwan were…” Wonwoo made an obscene gesture with his hands and spelled it out. “F-u-c-k-e-n...ing?”

“...Fuckening? No, Wonwoo. No, I don’t think they were fuckening.”

Jihoon snorted.

“Fine,” Wonwoo said, flipping his manila folder shut. “The alibi you provided holds up, thanks to Xu. I suppose you’re free to go. Car’s been taken back to your place by your little assistant. God knows where else he takes joyrides with those spare keys of his. You got a ride home?”

Hansol glanced at Jihoon, hopeful. 

“Sorry, kid, I have to meet with another client here. Big producer. DUI. And this guy actually pays me, so…” 

Wonwoo sighed. 

“Alright, flower child. Let’s go.” 

Hansol ambled out to the lot with him and slid into the passenger side of his cruiser. Both of them ignored the wolf whistles from the bored cops hanging around. 

Sad as it was, this was a fairly commonplace sight at the station. Wonwoo’s coworkers loved to gang up on him for being the only detective on the force worth a damn, as well as for his strange unspoken camaraderie with Hansol. The two of them had crossed paths often enough in the last year that outside of the station and crime scenes, it wasn’t worth keeping up an especially hateful pretense. 

Sure they still bickered though. Case in point:

“Chwe, you smell like a goddamn patchouli oil factory. Is that, like, a natural body odor or do you order special cologne so you can get the Mansonette aroma?” 

“Ha ha,” Hansol muttered. 

Alright, so Wonwoo was the one doing most of the bickering. Blowing off steam, all in good fun. 

The detective chortled at his own wit and turned the radio up. It was tuned to his most favorite station, which exclusively played British war ballads from the 40s. Anne Shelton crooning about her dear old sweetheart and whatnot. Wonwoo sang along like he was performing at the Ode, scrunching his face up, his deep voice warbling out heartfelt ad-libs.

Hansol sank lower in his seat and lolled his head against the window. He watched desiccated bushes and golden hills slip by and got to thinking. 

So it was clear Seungcheol’s boyfriend and coach had gone ahead with their plan. He’d have to come good on his promise to Chan to canvas the Choi estate. 

Wonwoo rolled near the boardwalk and slowed. He dug inside his suit jacket pocket and held Minghao’s Polaroid out to Hansol.

“Heyo,” Hansol said, surprised. He wondered if it was a trick.

“Look,” Wonwoo said, “I’m no great fan of yours, but I also don’t wanna see you drowned or disappeared or dead in some horrifying manner. So I’m telling you this once. Best to forget about it. All of it. Seungkwan and Seungcheol Choi and Mingyu Kim. There’s some things not worth digging up. Some things out there that when you catch a glimpse of them it’s just best to pretend you never saw anything in the first place.”

“You know him,” Hansol said, reading the currents. Wondering what the link was between the Choi case and the Kim case. “You know Mingyu…”

Wonwoo sucked on his teeth, inching the car against a curb. He scratched his long nose, hesitating. 

“If you want to help Minghao Xu,” he said finally, “if you want to help him find some inner Nirvana or whatever you hippies call it, check out 19 Driftaway Drive.” 

Driftaway Drive estates… Choi had been advertising those very properties the night Seungkwan went missing. 

Wonwoo kept talking, sounded dead serious. “Go no further than that. You understand, Hansol?”

“Copy that, lieutenant.” 

Wonwoo rolled his eyes. “Now get outta this car before _I_ get arrested on suspicion of possession.”

Hansol gladly complied. Before he could amble off Wonwoo called out to him one last time.

“Chwe? You hear anything about Fallin Flower or Socksoon? Bail out. That’s it, you’re done. It’s beyond you at that point.”

“Far out,” Hansol muttered, getting a prickle on the back of his neck. Wonwoo saluted, floored the gas like he was being chased, and screeched away.

_Socksoon? Sock Soon?_

Wonwoo had said it like one word though, fast, under his breath, like he was scared of saying it too loud. 

_Socksoon. Fallin Flower._ Hansol mouthed the words again. 

The boardwalk was taking on a sinister feel. Those flimsy man-made planks covering the ever shifting marshy tides. 

Beyond it lay the ocean, unknowable, yawning with mystery. Who could hope to hold back a force that great? 

Hansol felt a primal fear but knew he wouldn’t follow Wonwoo’s well-intentioned advice. Self preservation had never been high on his to-do list.

There was something going on out on Velasquez Beach, under the boardwalk…they were all being stirred in a pot, the heat slowly turning up, and before they knew it they’d be stew. It was almost tangible. 

“Freaky deaky,” Hansol said to himself, winding his way through the sand. 

At home, he locked the door for the first time in six months. He scribbled _Come back safe, Kwannie_ on a rolling paper, smoked and fell asleep. 

Then he had a dream that was mostly really just memory, playing out on shaky 8 mm.

  
  


He and Seungkwan were at the beach as usual, but this time they’d done it real nice. 

Brought a picnic blanket and some champagne to celebrate Seungkwan getting signed to a label. The ocean was still and peaceful and no one else was around. The moon smiled down in a benevolent mood, Venus in her 90-degree aspect. 

They were in their own little bubble as they always tended to be, impermeable to the outside. Hansol lying back, resting up on his elbows, Seungkwan half on top of him, sifting his hands through Hansol’s too-long hair, studying the strands. 

“You better do something about all this,” he said. “I’m attracting _real_ reporters now. They’re all gonna say I’m going out with some hippie.”

“Yeah?” Hansol teased, tilting his face up, inches away from Seungkwan’s mouth. “Is that bad PR?”

“Stop making fun of me,” Seungkwan whispered. But he was grinning and his eyes kept traveling down to Hansol’s lips of their own accord. “This is serious business now, Sollie, I’m a real rising star.”

Hansol laughed, ran his hands down Seungkwan’s sides, “Oh, it’s serious business? It’s serious business—?” 

“Stop, stop, I’m fucking ticklish—” 

Then Hansol pulled him down by his hips and things went quiet again, peaceful and warm and languid. 

“Hey,” Seungkwan said eventually, breaking away to rest against Hansol’s chest, his mouth pursed in his funny-serious pout, “You think this good thing’s gonna last forever?” 

Hansol stroked his head, hummed into the downy soft hair. 

“Why not, babe?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Seungkwan said, “there’s something about fate…or the universe’s underpinnings or whatever you wanna call it. We’re all just…along for the ride. You know?”

His face was telecasting serene contemplation. He was rarely this introspective out loud, but Hansol could roll with it.

“Well, I guess, yeah. What makes you think it won’t last?” 

Hansol was calm when he thought about those things. So was Seungkwan, kind of wry and realistic. That was part of what made it work.

“I don’t know,” Seungkwan said, propping himself up with an elbow in the sand. He was looking right into Hansol’s eyes, trying to stare into his soul. “I just always get this sensation that there are so many things going on, underneath it all. Things that we won’t know about until it’s too late. Like, washing us in other directions, regardless of what we want. Maybe it’s… just not up to us at all. Never was. You know?”

Hansol tried to move, protest or argue or kiss him again or something… 

But then he woke up, alone on his cold empty bed, and remembered reality.

  
  
  


“Are you sure this looks right?”

“Channie, the Transcendental Meditationists would be jealous.” 

They were dressed in twin tie-dye getups, bead necklaces, lots of heavy scents wafting around, some evil eye pendants for authenticity. 

The cover story was: Chan and Hansol, members of the Trauma Spiritual Support Group, were coming to offer their services to the beleaguered Choi family and friends. 

Chan was driving. Hansol looked out the window at the sights rolling by. As they wound closer to the Choi estate, the scrubby bushes gave way to palm trees. Cars grew lean and tinted, porcelain veneers and false tans sparkled in the sun. Blonde housewives high on Valium pushed strollers around and teased their puffy lips. 

He and Chan went over it once more. 

Buoyed by his new idealistic singer friend Seungkwan, Seungcheol Choi had decided to halt his (corrupt?) real estate business operations and give all his money away. Jeonghan Yoon, the boyfriend, had subsequently plotted with Joshua the (therapist? guru? schemer?) life coach to keep Choi’s money in their control by having Choi abducted and committed to a sanatorium. 

Which, presumably, they’d gone through with yesterday. 

Before doing this, Jeonghan and Josh had tried to pay Seungkwan off in exchange for silence, but Seungkwan had refused the money. So perhaps Seungkwan was also being kept under lock and key at that sanatorium. 

Either that, or he’d met a more sinister fate. 

Hansol tried to keep the thought off his brainwaves. 

The purpose of Hansol and Chan’s visit was to discover the name of the place Seungcheol was being kept at. Presumably, it was another new-age type institution, based on the fact that Choi was willing to be known to the public as someone who hired a live-in life coach. 

Such appeals to the hippie population of the Beach sure hadn’t been working, though. There were thick rows of picketers the closer they wound to the mansion, all holding various jubilant signage, like _Goodbye, Fortunate Son!_ or _Ding Dong, the Prince is Gone!_

Chan parked outside the gates near a few beefy security guards. There was so much thick exotic foliage on the front grounds that they couldn’t even see the house. 

They got out and presented their fake business cards, and one of the men took Hansol’s card inside with him. He re-emerged minutes later with a stiff nod and let them through. 

Past the fronds and hyacinths and gardenias, the Choi mansion spiked out from the ground like a horribly mutated plant, all strange modern geometry and bare wood and glass. They were led into an opulent foyer of muted gold and black. Hansol could see all the way through to the massive pool in the backyard, nestled amongst more palms and shapely hedges.

Jeonghan Yoon approached them from the pool deck, a prim man with intelligent, gleaming eyes. The kind of smile that you felt revealed at once everything and nothing. In the light his luminous skin was ageless. He ushered them to a circle of expensive-looking armchairs, calling on one of the numerous housekeepers to pour them blood orange whiskey sours in hip-looking highball glasses.

“I have to admit, I’ve never heard of the Trauma Spiritual Support Group, but Cheol might have. He had— has— such a strong belief in healing the mind _and_ the body. He’s an extraordinary person. I miss him very much,” Jeonghan sighed, dabbing at the corners of his eyes.

“Yes, of course,” Hansol said sagely, rolling one of the beads of his necklace between his thumb and pointer. “We all pray for his safe return.”

“Thank you, it's much appreciated. Y’know, maybe Joshua is aware of your group? Maybe you run in some similar circles. Joshy! Come and meet— I’m sorry, what did you say your names were?”

“I am known as Vernon. My colleague’s chosen denomination is Dino,” Hansol said, trying to sound wise and belabored.

“Dino,” Jeonghan repeated, nodding. He looked like he was desperately trying to keep a straight face. “Interesting.”

A man strolled onto the scene wearing a glossy suit that looked even more expensive than Jeonghan’s lace-ruffled black blouse. He was tall and svelte with a delicate face that somehow had some steel behind it.

“Joshua,” he said, extending a ring-clad hand. “Pleased to become acquainted.”

Hansol and Chan took turns shaking, feeling increasingly phony in their ridiculous gear. Joshua reclined in Jeonghan’s armchair, practically in the man’s lap. He tilted his head back like he was at the pictures. 

What kinda spiritual coach is this then, Hansol asked himself, more like a hungry talent manager than a guru?

“So, you boys help with, what? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Got a lot of Nam discharges in your customer base?” Sweet Josh’s airy tones clashed with his slightly mocking words. 

“Something like that. We offer support to anyone on the Beach who has recently undergone any manner of tragedy,” Hansol said. He was trying not to stare too hard at the way Jeonghan was carding his hand through Josh’s hair. 

“Mr. Choi was a good friend of our community down near the boardwalk, and we want to help in any way possible. We were hoping to, like, sus out the bad vibes in this house and ensure he returns home safe. Only groovy fates shall await you from now on,” Chan put in. 

Hansol was getting real negative energy from the way Jeonghan and Josh kept glancing at each other like they were communicating telepathically. Josh raised one slim eyebrow, testing the waters. 

“You run with the Unitarian Unilateral Universalists? Or the Shakers?” 

When Hansol and Chan said nothing, the eyebrow lifted up further.

“Reformed Neopaganists? Order of the Diamond?”

“We’re with Fallin Flower,” Hansol blurted, unsure why it came out. 

Just that seventh sense prickling at his toes, saying buddy, you know what to say. 

Josh’s eyes widened. He looked at Jeonghan again, and they exchanged some quick heavy layers of face ingredients that Hansol couldn’t transcribe. 

“In that case, by all means,” Joshua said, suddenly quiet, almost cowed, “um, do- do whatever you need to do.”

“We’d love to accept your help,” Jeonghan said, equally subdued, his eyes kinda freaked.

Huh. Hansol took the effect the name-drop had at face value and dipped his head in a slight bow. 

“Let us proceed, dear Dino.”

They unearthed sage bundles from their pockets and lit them with their Zippos and waved them around, making a roundabout smoky route past smaller bedrooms, towards the palatial master suite.

“Did you see the way their faces, like, changed?” Chan asked from the corner of his mouth, once they were out of sight. “Soon as you even mentioned…”

“I caught it alright. I’m loath to use the C-word but do you think the Flower is some kind of rich people…”

“...cult…?” 

Hansol shivered and pushed past the double wood panels that separated the master suite from the rest of the house.

The space was full of suede furniture and dark taupe carpet. On top of the heavy bedside table was a bound book. Photo album, he realized. While Chan rummaged around in the drawer, Hansol was compelled to flick through the photos. 

Pictures of Choi and Yoon, Choi and Josh, Choi and friends, Choi and business partners… 

On the last page, he stilled.

Choi and Seungkwan. It almost eerily reminded of him of Minghao and Mingyu’s picture. Seungkwan’s hair was blown half in his face, his twinkling, knowing smile lighting the whole photo up. Seungcheol slightly rested his head on Seungkwan’s shoulder, mugging for the camera. They looked to be on a beach that wasn’t of the Southern California persuasion. Too-blue water. 

Hansol’s fingers trembled a little. 

“Hey, lookit this!”

He slammed the album shut and turned to see Chan shaking a flyer at him. _Second Life Sanatorium: A Fallin Flower Venture._

The glossy brochure presented a happy looking spaced-out man in a white robe, flashing double peace signs. Sure looked a bit culty. There was even an address and everything. 

“Good going, man. That has to be the place.”

But he didn't feel fulfilled in the slightest. So he flipped the album open again and slipped the Polaroid with Seungkwan out, pocketed it. 

Chan watched him but said nothing, his eyebrows furrowing with sympathy. 

On their way back, they paused just before the foyer. “I thought we were done with these people,” Jeonghan was saying, sounding distressed.

“They never confirmed,” Josh said. “The Flower will keep falling until Socksoon themselves…” he trailed off. A troubled silence. 

Hansol was getting those goosebumps again. He cleared his throat and stepped into the light. 

“I believe we’re done here, brothers.”

Jeonghan and Josh both plastered on wide happy grins that were almost grimaces. 

“I hope you found everything satisfactory,” Jeonghan said.

“Sure did,” Hansol murmured, taking off for the door. 

Chan followed in his footsteps. “Are we gonna go visit Second Life?” he asked once they’d loaded themselves into the car.

But last night’s dream and seeing Seungkwan’s face in the photo album had triggered some unfamiliar compelling emotions. 

Chief among them, a vague, strange intuition that Seungkwan’s case had more similarities with the missing Mingyu Kim than any half-cooked for-profit plot.

Besides, he’d still be in the can at present if Minghao hadn’t stopped by and cleared his name with Wonwoo. Hansol owed him one.

“Gonna make a pit stop at home, then hit up 19 Driftaway Drive,” Hansol said. “Let’s give this Fallin Flower business a rest til tomorrow, let it chill a bit.”

“Why do you wanna visit 19 Driftaway Drive?” Chan asked, making a face as he navigated past a few especially unruly picketers.

“It’s the Kim case. I get the feel something’s going down soon.” He’d had the chance to explain it to Chan that morning. 

“Yeah, but something’s always going down at 19 Driftaway…”

“Why, you heard things on the boardwalk about it?”

“Well, before Choi bought it, the old address used to be this house that groupies and bands, like, rented rooms out to party in. It kind of has a checkered history. Pretty famous, though, Choi didn’t even tear it down or remodel or anything. I heard the Zombies went on this, like, crazy acid bender there once and almost killed Peter Fonda… I’ve heard it’s still a pretty groovy place to get down and all. Only now…” 

Hansol didn’t like the way Chan was glancing at him. “What?”

“There’s rumors it’s been taken over by the FBI. Crawling with informants.”

“Oh, fuck it’s a snitch house?” No wonder Wonwoo had seemed jumpy about it. 

"Yeah, man. Like, real shady."

“Well, let’s go in presuming it’s still mostly musicians. We can pose as…” he was going to say band members, but he couldn’t pluck a guitar riff worth a damn.

“Let’s be, like, music writers,” Chan said. “Or, like...whaddya call it? Photojournalists! I can borrow Eomma’s camera.”

“Right on.”

“I always wanted to party with a band. Doesn’t it sound fun? Document the debauchery, get some dirt. Cause a scandal.”

“Remind me never to get on your sour side,” muttered Hansol. 

He turned the radio up and settled back, listening to the besotted Brian Wilson croon longingly. Palms melted back into scraggly brush. People’s hair grew longer, shaggier, their postures more relaxed the further they got from the Choi estate.

He thought about Jeonghan and Josh and had the distant intuition things were only going to get stranger here on out. It was high noon on the surf. Tide was going to come down soon, leaving herrings and jellyfish stranded to wait on their imminent demise.

The DJ’s voice sprang to life. Whoever this guy was, he loved his job. You could practically hear his smile through the airwaves. 

“That was Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys! I hope all you Velasquez beachgoers are slatherin your sunscreen on and staying safe out on the boardwalk…it’s still fog as usual out on our sweet old ship. Once more, we at SVT LA are tellin you good folks... beware the Fallin Flower.”

Hansol jerked up in his seat but Chan gave no indication he’d heard anything strange. 

You’re daydreaming, he said to himself, dazed, and tried to fall asleep under the balmy sun.


	3. Being Dead is a Full-time Job, Man

19 Driftaway Drive was nestled at the edge of a canyon, a sprawling stucco property with a single turret which poked up at the sky like an eternal middle finger. Rollicking music came pouring out of it, along with sounds of people laughing and hooting and dancing. It was painted by blue lights on the outside and its French doors were wide open to anyone who wanted to drift through and partake in the fun. 

Hansol and Chan were in semi formal attire. Each had one of Chan’s mother’s old Pentax Spotmatics around their necks. They were posing as photojournalists from Hit Magazine, an underground publication which only cared about the niche and the raunchy. Hansol was feeling illogically keyed up, craning his neck as they strolled up the long drive, trying to catch a glimpse of sandy hair in one of the many bay windows. 

Inside, the decor was very Wiccan-bohemian. Twisted black candelabras, hazy incense smog, hand-knotted straw wall hangings, wicker lamps shades. Pretty young women in floral minidresses and Bardot headbands swanned by, giggling at them. Hansol caught glimpses of some glaring, scarred faces in the hallway down from the living room. 

Are those the infamous snitches? he wondered. 

The further in they got, the more the whole affair had an ingrown sinister tinge that was growing raw and red against the surface. His skin crawled with bad vibes. 

“Let’s split up,” he said. 

Chan dutifully turned and held his camera aloft like a threat, winding towards a man in the living room with bangs that seemed to have a life of their own. For his part, Hansol drifted along down the hallways, past people sniffing, people tonguing, people just staring off into space, somewhere far away. Anytime anyone said “Hey,” he tensed, wound up like a drum skin. The fear was very uncharacteristic, kind of chafed against him.

“Where are you, Kim?” he muttered under his breath. Was Kim shooting up or snorting or smoking or doing an unholy combination of the three somewhere upstairs? 

Was he buried somewhere out in the backyard, actually dead? 

Hansol’s brain felt crackly like a dried-up flower. Ha. Flower. Fallin Flower. 

The thought made his peripheral vision prickle, and as he looked around he realized more and more that the majority of people present were, in fact, wearing big flowers somewhere on their person. There were patches, lapel pins, patterns, shapes cut out of fabric. Oodles of purple petals.

Like the ones drawn in chalk on the sign outside Swimming Fool.

It freaked him out even more. He speed walked past it all, bumping into chairs and tables and leggy blondes in trenches and leathered scowling bikers. He found himself in the mouth of the blessedly quiet kitchen.

The buzzing at his skull paused as he filled a paper cup with water from the sink. As he drained it, he looked around. 

The kitchen was empty except for a dark-haired man seated at the wooden table, peacefully eating a piece of pizza. He was wearing a snug knitted polo and looked like he could be a catalog model, or at least an extra on The Mod Squad. 

Funny, Hansol thought, the scene almost looked like a Renaissance tableau by a particularly groovy master. The lone diner, framed in blue chiaroscuro at the center of some big bay windows, silver moon backlighting him into a sort of gentle, hungry spirit. 

Hansol wandered closer, partly out of curiosity, partly because the pizza smelled real appealing. Then realized the guy looked oddly familiar, and those too-large canines…

“Oh shit,” he muttered. 

The man looked up from his precious pepperonis. Hansol couldn’t believe his own two eyes. 

Sure enough it was Mingyu Kim, in the flesh. Back from the dead and with a fresh hair dye job to boot, looking none the worse for wear. 

“Hey!” Mingyu said through a mouthful of pizza. He smiled the goofy friendly grin Hansol was familiar with. “What’s crackin, man?”

“Are you real?”

“Huh…?” 

Mingyu put his pizza down. His mouth froze in its chewing and he held a hand up to his face, checking for himself.

“I dunno, but it sure seems like it,” he said, sounding very uncertain.

Hansol thought he felt eyes on his back. He checked over his shoulder and swore he saw two roadie-types turning around quickly, forcing casual looks, beginning to whistle. So this was how the 60s had died and been gutted clean. 

The Summer of Love, the groovy sleep ins and live ins and protests and parties had all been infiltrated, growing into something much more sinister. Occupied by greater forces, all plotting. Towards what? 

Hansol leaned closer to Mingyu and put on what he hoped was a significant expression. “Remember that chore you wanted me to do?”

Mingyu looked even more freaked. His mouth pursed with uncertainty. “Ch-chore?”

“Yeah…you were asking me about that hot tub?” He slipped Minghao’s Polaroid from his pocket and slid it across to Mingyu. 

Mingyu’s eyes widened, grew alive and glistened. He covered his mouth with one hand, collecting himself, looking down at his and Minghao’s beaming faces. 

Then he pointed off towards the side of the table, pocketing the photo. 

Hansol looked and saw a stack of what looked like sound equipment, on the counter under a cupboard. Motherfucker. So the house was bugged. 

“Uh, yeah, man,” Mingyu said, his voice hoarse. “The hot tub, it was, um, located in the back office, wasn’t it?” 

He tipped his head towards the window behind him and rose to full height. He was wearing platform boots that gave him some unnecessary extra inches. Privately, Hansol wondered if the altitude made Mingyu privy to info his shorter brethren weren’t in on. 

Hansol followed the hasty long strides out to the back patio, which had a careening view of the tawny hills and the beach, way down below. The mist had come rolling in from the sea and they were half hidden in its gloom. No one else was out, scared off by the sudden chill. 

“No recording equipment out here, or unfriendly eyeballs. You know Minghao?” was the first thing Mingyu said in a rough, earnest whisper. “God, I thought I was never gonna hear from him again. How is he, is he doing okay?”

“Well, he’s doing just fine financially, thanks to you.”

Mingyu sighed. “Ah, the deposit. I knew it was shady but I, I couldn’t help it, I really miss him.” 

He looked out in the direction of the faraway beach, his face wistful. Hansol patted his broad back in reassurance. 

“He’s holding up okay. He’s a strong person.”

“Yeah, thanks for checking on him, man. So you’re like…”

“Oh, sorry. Hansol Chwe. I’m a private eye of sorts…” He handed Mingyu his business card. “Minghao hired me to find out what exactly the fuck is goin on. So, uh, do you wanna tell me what exactly the fuck is goin on... ?”

Mingyu sighed and dug in his pant pocket. He pulled out a crumpled pack of Kools. 

“It’s a bit of a long story. Want a smoke?”

“I don’t really do cigarettes…”

“Me neither,” Mingyu said, almost relieved, putting the cigarettes right back again. “It’s all a part of my cover. Along with the look, you should see the wardrobe the feds provided, goddamn collars and buttons and slacks…being dead is a full-time job, man, I wouldn’t recommend trying it.”

“So how’d you become…”

“A snitch? You can say it.”

“Feels like a bad word.”

Mingyu’s dark eyes studied his face. Hansol got the sense he was a pretty smart guy. That becoming an informant for the FBI was an alternative to a much more penumbral fate, which he’d smoothly escaped. 

“Have you ever heard of Fallin Flower?”

Hansol shivered and it had nothing to do with the fog pressing close, slicking his neck. “It keeps coming up lately…I still don’t know what, exactly, it is.”

“It’s a cruise ship, lots of talent from the Beach involved, singers, actors, whatever.”

A cruise ship? “No shit?”

Something about it sounded off.

“Well…” Mingyu’s eyes darted around. “It’s more than that, too. They use the ship to sell and pack things in and out of the country, if you know what I mean.”

Sell and pack. His seventh sense throbbed. Packets of heroin in Swimming Fool’s parking lot. 

“Drug op,” Hansol breathed. It was all adding up.

“Feds are involved with it,” Mingyu said. “And the LAPD; they’re all being paid off.”

“Oh, fuck…” This must be what Wonwoo had been digging into the past few years. It also explained why he despised the station and everyone else in it. 

"The Flower moves through a lot of Velasquez Beach real estate, including…”

“...Swimming Fool.”

Hansol shuddered. Some kind of cartel spreading its tentacles through Velasquez Beach real estate. 

And who was the mogul in charge of that particular industry? Before he could follow his nose down the tangent, Mingyu charged ahead.

“Minghao found out about what was happening on premises and told me, said he was just gonna try and ignore it. Didn’t wanna mess with those forces.” He shook his head. “But I made the mistake of digging further, raising a stink, and next thing I know the feds are at my door, sayin I’m up on the Flower’s list. Sayin I could either turn up as a waterlogged body near the docks thanks to Socksoon, or take the Department of Justice’s offer and go underground.” 

That name again. Whispered fast, hurried, scared. _Socksoon._

“This is some heavy fucking shit,” Hansol muttered, looking back at the house, paranoid. 

He realized Socksoon and Fallin Flower must’ve been behind what had happened to him at Swimming Fool. Maybe they’d caught wind of Minghao looking for a private investigator, felt suspicious, knocked him out, planted some heroin… 

Mingyu sighed, looked awful exhausted. Mournful, in fact, like the entire weight of the world was squishing him down. 

“What I wouldn’t give just to— just to be back where I was. Look around, all those— sinister faces. I don’t belong here, man.”

“Yeah… this place is buggin me out too.”

Mingyu scratched at his jaw, stalling, like he was trying to decide on something. 

“You know, I recognize your name. It’s a two way street,” he said. “I talk to the feds, sometimes the feds talk back...Keep me up to date with things.”

He fell into silence for a minute. The dim rock n roll pounded tinny behind them, like it was false, somehow. 

“They know you, man,” Mingyu said finally. “Fallin Flower. They’ve noticed you, been talkin about you.”

The cold pressed in on Hansol’s face. He took a shaky breath and looked out to where Mingyu was staring. The distant ocean, black and roiling. 

“What’ve they been sayin?”

“You’d better stop looking for Seungkwan Boo…”

Hansol squeezed his eyes shut, centering himself. His chest was pounding and his mouth was dry like he was on a bad trip. He felt something being tucked into his jacket pocket. 

When he came back to Earth long seconds later, he was alone in the mist. Mingyu was gone. 

In his jacket pocket, he found the pack of Kools. There was a scrap of paper in it with a phone number scrawled on it and a short message: _Tell Minghao I’m doing fine._

But Hansol knew he couldn’t do that. He was beginning to identify that instinct as the same reason Seungkwan had walked out on him. 

If Hansol told Minghao that Mingyu was alive and well, Minghao would investigate, find out about the Flower, get pulled into the crosshairs. Another innocent, wrapped up in it. That must have been why Seungkwan had left. He hadn’t wanted to make Hansol into a target. 

Then why come to his door and unload all that baggage six months later?

Hansol made his way back inside, found Chan near the kitchen interviewing a Brit with a saxophone. Soon as his friend caught sight of Hansol his face grew concerned.

“You okay? Lookin a little, like, off-color?”

“Chan, let’s go, man, this place is freakin me out….”

They made their way towards the front door. Out of the corner of his eye Hansol saw that they were being trailed by some of those supposed partygoers. But once they got into the car and peeled out of the drive, speeding down the treacherous canyon road, their wake grew clear.

He caught Chan up with what had happened, aware as the words left his mouth that he was feeling just as confused as Chan looked.

“So Fallin Flower isn’t a cult, it’s like, some sort of smuggling operation? But it’s rich enough that it’s almost a company…? It produces those Choi Real Estate commercials, and it started Second Life Sanatorium, and it owns, like, a cruise line apparently?”

“I’m muddled on the definites myself, but that isn’t nothin new…”

“Maybe you should talk to Jihoon."

"Jihoon?"

"Yeah, if the cruise ship hires actors, like, on contracts and so on, maybe he’s heard about it?”

Hansol raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t yet thought of that angle. 

“Far out, you little goddamn genius.” He ruffled Chan’s hair and Chan ducked away with a protest, still grinning from the praise. 

Chan dropped him off at Jihoon’s place, a mere five minute walk from Hansol’s home. The hour was ungodly, but he knew that Jihoon was often most productive late at night. 

Sure enough, from the outside, Hansol could see his study lights on. One of the few dependable on the beach. He knocked and waited.

Jihoon’s dad had known Hansol’s dad way back in Busan. Their sons had grown up familiar, always a few blocks away from each other. They’d fallen out of contact once Hansol graduated high school. 

But when he’d first begun his business he’d had a weird case where a friend of a friend was convinced a certain hit song was plagiarizing the contents of his diary, and he’d been paid a fair amount to check it out. Unsure on copyright laws, Hansol had looked up entertainment lawyers in the yellow pages and chanced upon Jihoon’s name, rising up from his past like a ghost. 

Jihoon had helped Hansol out pro bono, and now, a year and a half later, still wouldn’t accept a dime from him. 

The door swung open and the man himself was solemnly looking up at him. “I thought you’d be around soon,” Jihoon said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Why don’t we take a stroll along the docks. Catch some fresh seaside air.”

  
  


The docks had a heavy, dense fog rolling in, nearly impenetrable. When Hansol looked down he couldn’t even find his own two feet. The only way he knew he was moving forward at all was the dead air moving past his face, stinging against his skin.

“Fallin Flower _is_ the name of a cruise ship,” Jihoon said. The dim street lights threw his face into eerie shadows. “They hire out a lot of local singers, have some musical productions onboard, far as I’ve heard. Where’d you hear about it?”

“Just a case.”

“Hansol, does this have anything to do with Seungkwan?”

Hansol could lie and get away with it if he wanted to, but he trusted Jihoon. And Jihoon knew him well enough to sus the truth out anyways. He said yes.

Jihoon worried at his lip, troubled. 

“The ship seems to have a murky history. Just popped up out of nowhere around three years ago, buckets of cash on hand, seemed nearly rich enough to buy out the whole boardwalk if it wanted to. She goes round to the Virgin Islands and back once a month or so.”

Hansol tried to place what context he’d heard the Virgin Islands mentioned in. “Bermuda Triangle...?”

“Yeah, pretty close by.”

“Is she operational right now?”

“She loaded up for the newest trip a few days ago, I think. Not sure, though.” Jihoon didn’t need to ask anything to know what Hansol was thinking. “You’re thinkin Kwan is onboard.”

“Yeah.”

They looked out into the foggy inscrutable harbor, the obscured masses of anonymous ships, as if they could sense the Fallin Flower. Still somewhere out there, all of its secrets waiting locked in its cargo hold. 

The oily Piscean smell of the shores masking something ancient and sour underneath. 

“You’re deep in it,” Jihoon said, looking at him with something resembling pity. “Aren’t you.”

Hansol laughed and it sounded hollow even to himself. “Deeper than the Dead Sea.”

  
  
  


There was something slipped under his front door when he finally made it home. A rectangular postcard of the turquoise Pacific. 

_Wish You Were Here!_

Hansol flipped it around, his hand trembling. Neat, small writing. He recognized it instantly. 

He didn’t so much sit down on the futon as crumple, his knees kinda giving out.

_The ocean smell is thick these days. You can almost touch it, the way the foam rises up, mist everywhere. Reminds me of rain. God, we haven’t had rain in so long. Remember that day with the planchette?_

_I’m always thinking about that day. I can’t keep the good simple times off my mind. We were so happy, we had such a good thing. You knew me very deeply. My moods and my dislikes, my prickly habits, the things I loved most in the world._

_I don’t think I’ll ever find someone like you again._

_I hope you understand why I had to leave six months ago. It had nothing to do with you. Well, I suppose it kind of did. Seeing as I left mainly to protect you. I was starting to get caught up in these nasty things… I didn’t want to pull you into them. You were too good for it._

_But now you’re here, anyways. Now you’re in it. Thanks to me. So it was all for nothing. I couldn’t tell you why I did that, pulled you into my mess after taking all that precaution._

_I guess I just knew that if anyone could fix this, it’s you._

_Hansol, I miss you. I miss the way things were. I’m really sorry it ended up like this—_

The postcard wasn’t signed but of course he knew who’d written it. He pressed it to his lips, closing his eyes. Sifted through his jumbled memories… 

That day with the planchette. About a year ago.

  
  


The uneven shift of Seungkwan’s sunbleached hair, burnished in the midday sun. He was sitting cross-legged on his favorite shag rug trying not to smile. 

“There is absolutely no way this is going to work,” he said, snarky and adoring all at once.

Hansol was leaning over the old Ouija board they’d found half-buried on the beach the other night, his hair flopping onto his face, fingers outstretched like a shaman in utmost concentration. He was on a case, and it wasn’t going so hot. So he’d decided to go left field and try resorting to the paranormal, trying to tap into frequencies slightly above ground level. 

Seungkwan tsked at the obvious dramatics. He leaned over and brushed Hansol’s hair out of his eyes. “Are you feeling any _vibes_ yet?”

“Gimme the planchette, Kwannie,” Hansol commanded. 

“Alright, babe,” sounding dubious, but he handed it over nonetheless.

Hansol placed the rounded wood triangle on the center of the board. The circle of glass glared like an evil eye. 

Nothing happened for a few seconds, except Seungkwan sighing.

But then there was something almost magnetic pulling Hansol’s fingers quick, from corner to corner.

“Oh my god oh my god!” Seungkwan screeched, scrambling to his knees. “Are you doing that?” 

Hansol didn’t answer, busy feeling out the energy. 

“Tell me what it’s saying,” he muttered from between his teeth, eyes screwed shut. 

“Um— uh, okay— it’s saying— numbers… Eight… four… five—”

The feeling petered out.

“That’s it?” Seungkwan demanded, nonplussed. “It can’t be a phone number.” 

They mulled it over, Hansol still touching the board. Couldn’t have been a TV station…probably wasn’t a postal code… 

“I got it,” Seungkwan said eventually, his eyes brightening. “I bet it’s a number in the yellow pages.” 

They hurried to check it out. There was a big ad that took up about half of page 845, and the words were real auspicious — 

_Crystal Vibrations Shopping Mall invites you to uncover your universe’s trickiest mysteries!!_

Seemed like it was just what he needed. Hansol grabbed Seungkwan’s face in both his hands. “God only knows what I’d be without you,” he quoted with deep feeling, and pulled Seungkwan in for a passionate thank you. 

“Come on, then,” Seungkwan panted a minute later, bright pink. “Let’s go solve that case.”

They ran out mindless, laughing and pulling each other forward under the clear blue sky. Picnickers at the park waved as they zipped by, amused at their excitement.

It was perfect weather, calm and welcoming. The kind you dreamt about when you first thought of moving to California. But as they neared the strip mall, a coin seemed to flip. Mother Nature became irritable. 

The clouds went all weird, blossoming up and growing bulbous mass. Turning darker by the second. And a strong wind came rolling down from the hills, upsetting the natural settled grooves of the beach. 

“What the fuck, is it gonna rain?” Seungkwan asked, breathless, being tugged along by his sleeve. He petered to a stop on the sidewalk. “Sollie, look!”

Hansol looked up in surprise. In the distance, there were columns of mist gathering on the hills. The clouds were nearly black by now, swirling and congregating above them. The light of the sky was blotted out almost entirely. 

It was like the galaxy’s eye had closed, a mighty temper tantrum brewing in its consciousness.

“That is real fuckin ominous,” Hansol said. 

“We gotta keep going though!”

Then because Seungkwan looked a little out of breath, Hansol bent his knees slightly and beckoned. Seungkwan jumped up on his back and wrapped his arms around his chest. As they continued towards the mall there was a cymbal crash from the heavens. 

Seungkwan yelped, grabbed onto Hansol for dear life. Both of them started giggling uncontrollably as the water began to roll on down from the Hollywood hills and the skies in peals and torrents and rivers, soaking both of them to the bone. 

Hansol ran faster and faster, Seungkwan’s laughter nearly drowned out by the lashing rain and the honking of baffled commuters who hadn’t turned their headlights on in half a decade. The basin was filling up with what looked to be the beginnings of the second great flooding. The ocean had overspilled its boundaries, finally rushing up to meet the land. 

And when they finally splashed into the strip mall, still laughing, it turned out to be nothing but an empty razed lot, the mist settling on its edges, gleaming and glassy in the rain. 

But it didn’t even matter. At that point, they’d all but forgotten the reason they’d come in the first place. 

They took shelter under an awning nearby and warmed each other up for however long it took the storm to abate, not really even noticing the frigidity or the generally miserable conditions, or the fact that they’d both probably be laid up with terrible head colds all of next week. “I love you,” Seungkwan kept laughing, half interrupted by his own hysterical giggles and by Hansol’s mouth, but he kept saying it until it was a kind of mantra, I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you, to the beat of the raindrops and the clouds, the cosmic chant of the two of them, together. 

  
  


Hansol blinked and was staring back down at the postcard again. Something wicked trembled in his throat. 

He checked this year’s yellow pages, feeling real numb and empty. 

The old address from that day two years ago wasn’t a strip mall anymore. It was now taken up by a certain enterprise called the Fallin Flower Talent Agency.

Even here, even in the safe shelter of his fuzzy golden memories, the shadows were taking root. 

Well alright, then. If the universe was going to continue to send him messages, he’d take it up on its offer. He knew where he was headed, next morning, soon as the sun rose up.


	4. Sell Your Name for Some Fame!

Next morning Hansol gelled his hair, put on a slightly wrinkled grey plaid suit that had once been Appa’s, and could hardly recognize himself in the mirror. 

“Lookin sharp,” Chan said wonderingly from out front. He was still in casual gear, Yellow Submarine T-shirt and faded swim trunks.

“When we get there I’m gonna go in alone, Channie.” Hansol scratched at his neck, unfamiliar with the stiffness of his collar. “Things are getting real dark right about now. I don’t want you mixed up in any of this, so you’re gonna wait out in the car.”

“Right on.”

The empty lot from that day in the rain had undergone a significant transformation. Now it was taken up by a gaudy art deco style building with extensions flaring out like petals, like a doorway to a different dimension. 

Block letters out front read _Fallin Flower Talent Agency,_ lit up by showtime bulbs, even in the daylight. Goddamn waste of electricity, but Hansol got the sense being eco-friendly was the least of Fallin Flower’s concerns.

There was a hip looking blonde girl doing valet, but Chan waved her off and she let him park, albeit a little suspicious. 

“What are you gonna do in there?” Chan asked as he parked, looking kinda panicky. “Do you think there’s some information on the cruise inside? Like, maybe they recruit for the ship or something?”

All Hansol knew for sure was that Seungkwan's postcard had said, _I guess I just knew that if anyone could fix this, it’s you._

So here he was, where the crosswinds and the weird tendrils of destiny and Seungkwan himself had all conspired to lead him. There must've been a reason for it. The Talent Agency must have connections to the cruise ship, the cartel itself, or an unholy combination of the two.

"I figure I’ll pretend to be an entertainment lawyer. I can have em call Jihoon, back me up. Find my way towards the ship somehow. Maybe figure a way to be there when it unloads or something.”

“Okay. Good luck. Like, be careful.”

Hansol had brought a worn leather briefcase that he’d found and thought had maybe belonged to Seungkwan. As he entered the malevolent-feeling building, he tucked the briefcase under his arm for luck and prayed to whatever being was up there for some headway. 

At the counter of the lobby, a blonde in a red jumpsuit was fastidiously taking notes. She glanced up at him as he approached. Her nametag proclaimed her as _Temperance! <3\. _She went gooey-eyed and dropped her pen. 

“Oh, it must be you! You’re here early!” she chirped before he could even open his mouth. Her babyish voice echoed in all the unused space. 

Hansol's eyes widened. Had the Flower been expecting him to find his way right into their jaws?

“Early…?”

“Yes, well, no worries, sir. It's good we can get a head start. Right this way, please.”

Temperance ignored his confusion and scrambled up, directing him towards a hallway.

“Um, where are we—”

“I know it’s your first time here, sir, and it’s such an honor to finally see you in the flesh, but things will become super clear in a second!”

Well...that sure sounded useful, didn't it.

Temperance wasn't giving him any ominous or unsavory vibes in any way, so he kept allowing himself to be tugged along into the depths of the building, down a few serpentine winding hallways, each one longer and more dimensionally impossible than the last.

In the ultimate corridor, they were greeted with the strange sight of a series of maroon-haired young men lined up single file, backs against the wall. Each one was of a different height, uniformly clad in a trench coat, bell bottoms, and Cuban heeled boots. All of them wore canvas backpacks and held pieces of paper which they were studying voraciously. As Hansol and Temperance walked past, each man looked up, gave Hansol a frightened half bow, and returned right back to his paper. 

Freaky.

He was getting the same dark airwaves that he'd felt at the house on Driftaway Drive, a distant intuition that something else was driving all these people. They all had a real vacant vibe to their eyes, except for the man closest to the end of the hallway, who wasn’t holding anything except the backpack. When Hansol walked past him he smiled with all his teeth in a nervous boxy way, then immediately furrowed his eyebrows and looked freaked, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. 

Hansol had no chance to stop and chat though. Temperance was ushering him towards a room with a labelless door. Not great.

"Uh, wait, wait, hold up-"

Temperance swung the door open as he balked, and gave him a weird look. There wasn't anything in the room except a low, cheap table and a couple of folding chairs. 

"Is everything alright, sir?"

Hansol coughed. "Of course."

Temperance sat him down at the table and plopped a thick binder in front of him. She gave him a respectful smile when he just looked up at her, wondering what was expected of him. Waiting to understand why he had been directed to this transmogrified foreign place, where once he could remember being so happy, but now, had been taken over by these people and their underhanded schemes.

“The first one will be in soon, sir,” she said. “I’m a _huge_ fan, by the way.”

“Oh, well, thanks…?”

She hurried back out. Hansol watched the door swing shut, furrowing his eyebrows, uneasy. Unsure what was to come. 

Well, now that he was here, seemingly having infiltrated the place without any effort… 

He flipped the thick binder open. It was filled with headshots of the men outside, and names of movies.

He realized the men were actors, and the subtext must’ve been their significant filmography. 

Had he been mistaken for some casting director for the cruise ship, then? 

The door swung open. 

The charming actor from before stumbled inside, grinning around in his anxious way. He stepped towards Hansol and put his canvas bag down next to the table. 

Hansol glanced down at the bag, getting a little fuzzy prickle in his brainstem.

“Hi!” the actor said loudly before Hansol could examine the flicker of intuition. He put his hands behind his back like he was ready to be arrested and planted his feet shoulder-width apart. His headshot proclaimed him to be _June Moon._

“June Moon?” Hansol wondered, squinting down at the text. “Radical name. Real poetic.”

“Well actually- oh, shit. They told me I wasn’t allowed to, um, have a conversation with you.” 

“Really? That’s alright, man, you can chat.”

“Oh, well, um, okay. Actually, my name’s Junhui, like, June-hwei, and my last name’s Wen, but they had me change it once I got here. You know what they say about Hollywood! Sell your name for some fame!” 

Junhui’s face dropped soon as the words left his mouth. 

“Oh… I don’t know why I just said that. You’re in Hollywood…I’m trying to be in Hollywood…Stupid, stupid.”

Hansol snorted. Junhui looked frozen and then tried laughing along. 

“Ha…ha? Am I being…laughed at or with?”

“You’re all right, man.”

“Oh, okay,” Junhui said, giving a pleased, genuine smile this time. “Do you want me to read, or…?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, go for it.” 

Junhui paced around, his trench coat flapping behind him like a massive bird, gathering his acting juju or whatever it was Brando types did these days and doing a strange vocal exercise under his breath. But just around then, Hansol’s seventh sense flared to life again, whispering to him, you're here for a reason, Hansol, there's always a purpose, check out that canvas backpack, man. The universe wouldn't have led you here for nothing. 

So Hansol leaned forward, unzipped the flap of the bag. 

Ah.

This was why the winds of destiny had directed him here after so many months. His happiest, most peaceful dreamlike memory, its joy soaked image like the rising of the sun in his mind, dissolved into nothing.

In its place, there was... _this:_ inside the bag, little gold-colored rounded cylinders. Instantly recognizable as heroin pellets.

“Oh, _fucking_ hell!”

Hansol stood up and took a few panicked steps away from the table as if that would help in any way. Junhui stumbled back mid-pace, pinwheeling his arms. 

“Whoa, uh, you okay there?”

“Uh, I dunno, Junhui, am I okay? Am I groovy? Do you wanna tell me why your backpack has _heroin_ in it?”

Junhui’s jaw dropped. His eyes grew to the size of snowglobes. 

“Um, wh-what did you say?” 

Hansol kicked the bag and some of the pellets came spilling forth. 

“Gimme one reason I shouldn’t call the cops right now.”

“Um, um— oh Jesus.” Junhui clutched at his chest. “They, uh, they just gave us th-those bags, when we started lining up for the cruise musical audition, like, that blonde lady Temperance and some other people, just handed them off, um, and told us not to open it whatever we did or we wouldn’t get the part, I swear, I swear! I swear on my mother’s life I didn’t know it had—” he looked round, his eyes welling up, and whispered like he was scared to say the word out loud— _"h_ _eroin_ in it _—_! Please, _please_ believe me—!” 

His earnest eyes were managing to tug on Hansol’s sympathy radar. 

“Okay, Jesus, I believe you. Calm down, don’t cry, take a deep breath, man. I believe you.”

Junhui got wobbly, flopped down in one of the folding chairs, stared at the pellets real freaked. 

“Oh my god, I’m gonna be arrested for— for _smuggling drugs_ , and I’m never gonna have a career and— _smuggling drugs! Me!_ I’ve never even— I’ve never even smoked a joint—”

“Junhui, you gotta calm down, man. Getting freaked isn’t gonna help us figure out what to do.”

Junhui turned his baleful gaze on Hansol. “And oh my god, _your_ career is so much more important than mine,” he moaned. “Oh, Jesus, I’m so sorry for getting you involved in this disaster—”

“Junhui,” Hansol said, “I’m not a casting director.”

“Of course not. You’re an _auteur."_ He pronounced it like oo-tuh. The French way, maybe. “When they said you were writing a maritime musical for the ship I couldn't believe it. I knew you were a recluse and I didn’t know what to expect, but you’re so _young!_ Oh my god, I’ve just ruined your life and it’s barely even begun…” 

“Okay, all cards on the table, man, I’m not a… a musical, er, playwright. Or whatever. Er, fact of the matter is, I’m not _in Hollywood._ "

“...huh?”

“Name’s Hansol Chwe. I’m a sort of, uh, private eye…”

Junhui’s eyes, if possible, grew even bigger. 

“Whoa… You’re investigating this place by posing as a reclusive composer who refuses to be photographed? Like no one knows what he looks like except his inner circle, so he might as well look like a twenty-year-old guy?”

“I’m twenty-two, dude,” he protested.

“Same thing. That’s, like, super method.”

“Anyways. So here’s what I’m thinkin about this smack…”

Before he could materialize his thoughts, there were voices outside the room. Hansol hastily packed the pellets back in the bag, right before the door swung open. 

It was Temperance again, with another burgundy-haired actor. “Oh, are you finished, sir?”

Hansol thought quick. If this playwright was some sort of monk type guy, no one really knew his habits or his eccentricities. He grabbed Junhui’s arm.

“I’d like to take Mr. Moon here outside. See him in some natural lighting.”

She gave him an odd look. “Well, okay, but you know what to do about that backpack, right?”

“The…oh, yes. Of course.”

But she didn’t leave, just stood there, expectant. Hansol inched towards the bag and she kept on smiling, mildly, nodding a bit, until he was kinda cornered into scooping the bag up on his shoulders.

“Excellent,” she said, still unmoving, until Hansol and Junhui and the backpack were entirely past her and out of the room. “Shall I watch the binder for you?” she called over her shoulder, already moving towards the table.

“Uh, sure.” 

Hansol, still grabbing Junhui’s arm, trotted past the zombie-eyed actors with their bags, each one doing their little bows as he passed them. The bag felt like it weighed twenty pounds in his sweaty hands. 

Jesus. If each one of those actors was unknowingly carrying that many pellets… 

He broke into a jog. He was planning to maybe dump the bag in one of those hallways, but as he entered the next corridors, he was more than sour to discover that each hallway now had another blonde in a different colored jumpsuit, watching him and the backpack like a hawk. 

No good. “Fuck fuck fuck,” he muttered, wondering where he could possibly dump it. There was that valet in the parking lot watching everything out there too, so even that wasn’t an option. 

He couldn’t see any alternative besides bringing it with him into the car. 

“Where are we going?” Junhui asked, not even remotely out of breath. His coat flapped loudly behind him.

“Parking lot. Oh, sorry, man, you’re free to run if you want-"

“No way! I put you in this mess, I have to help you get out of it.”

Hansol broke into a dead sprint and Junhui kept up with amazing ease. They cleared the futuristic lobby and made a mad dash towards the car. 

The girl doing valet gave a start when she saw them running like they were chasing after the Beatles themselves. And then she saw the bag, and reached in her valet booth and procured what looked like a semi-automatic handgun. 

“Chan,” Hansol hollered, “you gotta drive, man! Pronto!”

“Oh, shit!” 

Chan started the car and it coughed to life. Hansol and Junhui piled in the back with the canvas bag and cowered down in their seats, no time to stuff the H into the trunk, bullets whizzing around the vehicle. 

“Jesus, what the fuck happened!” Chan yelled over the screech of tires as soon as they’d booked it a fair distance away and, it seemed, out of range of the valet. He still kept up the too-fast pace, barely clearing traffic signs and nearly running over a few indignant stoned pedestrians. 

Hansol leaned forward against the back of the driver’s seat, hanging on for dear life. “Fallin Flower Talent Agency is a front for Fallin Flower the cartel is what happened.”

“And who’s that? He looks, like, modelesque?”

Junhui, still remarkably unsweaty and put-together, introduced himself in a dramatic reverbrating Rod Serling voice: “June Moon, accidental drug mule.”

“Aspiring musical actor,” Hansol deadpanned at Chan’s bewildered glance in the rear-view mirror. “That’s how Fallin Flower pushes the product through, I think. They must get their shipment on the Virgin Islands, bring it back on the cruise ship, store it in buildings like Swimming Fool or the talent agency. And at the talent agency, they disseminate through poor unsuspecting venues like our friend Junhui here.”

“So what are we gonna do with the bag?”

“Dump it in the harbor,” Hansol decided. “Seems like the most foolproof way to get rid of it.”

And they were nearly there, too, when the wail of police sirens cut through the air like a possessed Dick Dale solo. 

“Oh, shit!” they yelped in sync like the Three fucking Stooges.

Hansol stuffed the bag under Junhui’s long legs. Chan pulled over to the curb, white as a ghost.

“Oh my god, I'm gonna go to jail,” he moaned, eyes like dimes. “And I _just_ graduated high school and I won't even get the chance to, like, _enjoy_ being free of that hell….”

“You’re gonna be fine. Get your license out, move slow.”

Next to Hansol Junhui was rocking back and forth, his eyes squeezed shut, muttering “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” The blue-red lights rotoscoped on his face. It would've looked pretty cinematic if he hadn't seemed to be on the verge of a panic attack.

Through the window, Hansol could see a cop approaching, a newsboy cap pulled low over his head. 

Huh. Newsboy cap? That didn’t seem right… 

Even weirder, he realized the guy wasn’t in any uniform. Just slacks, suit jacket, suspenders… 

The not-cop strolled up to Chan’s window, leaned down.

“Aw, hey, it’s the little assistant!”

Hansol had never been gladder to see Wonwoo in his life. 

“If it isn't my favorite detective,” he called from the backseat. “How’s it shakin? Why’d you pull us over?”

“Well, Chwe, first of all, may I compliment you on the look? I’m an impartial party but you do clean up well. What, you sell all your bongs to pay for the suit?”

Hansol chose not to respond. 

Wonwoo chuckled. “I crack myself up. Anyways, I received an anonymous tip that a red 1963 El Camino was packing something nefarious in the trunk. This is the second time in a week your name’s been mentioned in conjunction with that particular crime, and Chan here sure was speeding.”

Then Wonwoo glanced next to Hansol and found Junhui, who was still kind of rocking back and forth, terrorized. The detective straightened up and his face softened somehow.

“Oh, who’s this? I don’t think I’ve seen him around?”

“This is June,” Hansol said. “He’s an actor friend. You might’ve seen him on the screen in, um, those v-vampire movies? June, meet Detective Wonwoo Jeon.”

“Nice to meet you, June.” Wonwoo’s deep voice was suddenly all gentle now in a register Hansol had never dreamed it could take on. 

“Um, very p-pleased to meet you too, detective.”

Wonwoo beamed at Junhui for a full three seconds.

Chan found Hansol in the rear-view and covered his mouth so as not to laugh out loud. 

“Well, anyway,” Wonwoo said, breaking himself out of his apparent reverie, “you boys should probably get back home. Y’know, June, there're some strange things happening out on the boardwalk these days…odd ships in the dock, shady characters abound...I hope you continue to stay safe. Perhaps, you know, thanks to my work.” 

Then he addressed Hansol again, his gooey smile dropping. “Oh, also, I’m required to inform you that gatherings of three or more after one PM may be looked into as possible cult activity.” 

Then beaming again at Junhui— “Good luck with the movies!”

“Thank you,” Junhui said, barely audible.

As soon as Wonwoo was out of ear sight Chan dissolved into cackles. “Did that just happen or was I, like, hallucinating?”

Hansol shook his head. “Hey, let’s get to the docks quick. I don’t wanna risk any more incidents.” He patted Junhui’s arm. “Good job, man.”

“I didn’t do anything…?”

“Yeah, just kinda sat there and looked terrified and hot. You were perfect.” 

  
  


The perma-fog of the harbor was thick even in the daylight. If anything it made it more sinister, the endless soft deceptive smell, the constantly shifting colors…spreading at once uneven and uniform in dimension. 

Who knew what was out there?

Hansol, Chan, and Junhui dumped the bag in the harbor and watched it burble down into the depths. They stared off into the half-hidden shapes of boats, all the names illegible. The three of them bonded by some kinda accidental-drug-mule pact.

Hansol couldn't see past the edge of the harbor but he imagined Seungkwan was somewhere out there all the same, far away from the fog, like the faint beam of a distant lighthouse.

Waiting, under the same sun, to come home.

The three of them got into the car in a hushed silence that was almost insulated, enforced by how weirdly sparse the streets seemed to be considering the midday hour. It was starting to bug Hansol out so he leaned forward and turned the radio up loud. 

“This is SVT LA, and that was War by the Temptations. War! What is it good for? Who knows? I sure don’t, man, I’m just a DJ on a ship. Oh, and here’s another reminder from the LAPD— report any suspicious characters, any do-gooders, any benign protesters, and anyone you think has arisen from the dead and is now out and about on the beach—”

Hansol turned the radio down. 

They dropped Junhui off at his apartment, a cramped, loud studio he was sharing with multiple other Hollywood hopefuls. Hansol gave him a business card. Junhui promised to call and invite them to a premiere if he ever made it big.

Chan drove them back to Hansol's house afterward and parked. He lived a few minutes away by foot, and told Hansol he'd walk home, try to clear his head a bit.

But he kept glancing over at Hansol's blank face nervously and ended up standing next to him in the dusky gloom of the hazy day for a few minutes. Smelling the salt all around, processing all the evil on Velasquez Beach that was slowly revealing itself.

The harbor was visible from Hansol's front yard if you looked out ahead. Between two other small shacks.

It was there, all right, a stretch of nothingness. Blotting out the beach, the cold water taking bites out of the earth as it sogged up the marshy land.

That evil fog all-encompassing.

“Hansol? Are we gonna visit the Sanatorium soon?” Chan asked him, sounding small.

Jesus. In the midst of undead bass players and exes on cruise ships and cartels-slash-talent-agencies he’d practically forgotten about Seungcheol Choi. 

“Let’s go tomorrow morning. You’ve been carting me around enough these days. Doesn’t your Eomma ever worry about where you are?”

Chan shrugged. “I’m outta high school and she’s a new-age type. Believes in, like, learning by experience. Real far out.”

"We'll go tomorrow," Hansol promised. "Go home, Channie. Be careful."

  
  


Later that night Hansol’s dreams were, as per usual, polluted by memory. 

This time it was him and Seungkwan in his car, him driving, surf shops and shopping centers zipping by in blurs of pale color. 

He didn’t know it then but it was getting close to the end of things. All of it was starting to make sense, now. Why there really never had been a warning. Why it had never soured or unraveled; felt just as comfortable, content as always. Buzzing with affection like the very beginning.

Seungkwan was carefully tuning the radio to his favorite station— girl groups of the 60s— and chattering on about the songs he was writing for the new EP and the studio he was recording at. His window was cranked down and his hair was all over the place, but he was too caught up in his excitement to notice. 

“But babe, you won’t believe, the session guitarist told me this— a lot of famous people come to hang out there and listen in on sessions. Like, really famous.”

Hansol hummed. “You mean like what, famous musicians?”

“Well, yeah, but other people too.”

“Like…”

“I don’t know, DJs, actors, directors, businessmen…”

“Businessmen?” 

“Yeah, babe, like real estate people and entertainment companies and advertising executives. It’s funny, apparently they love to get previews of what’s getting released on the Beach. They wanna support local singers and whatever.”

Hansol snorted. “What, they’re scouting people to sing their groovy commercial jingles? Is that your next project after the EP— like _Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer Wiener…!”_

Seungkwan slapped his arm and pouted. “You’re making fun of me.”

“How could I possibly _ever_ make fun of you,” with a serious-funny look of desire, along with an exaggerated lip bite or two. 

“Keep doing that,” Seungkwan said, mouth curling up on the sides, “and we might have to pull over.”

“Oh…?”

He did it a few more times, only increasingly greasy, adding such lines as, “Lemme tie your shoelaces, I don’t want you falling for anyone else,” and by the end of it, Seungkwan had his face buried in his hands, groaning, begging him to stop. 

“Alright alright. Only cus I like you.”

Eventually, Seungkwan reached out to hold his hand, asked, “Remind me again where exactly we’re going?” 

And Hansol just replied, “Wherever the car takes us,” and Seungkwan laughed half-mocking and half-loving and said okay, but let’s hope the car takes us within LA city limits, please. Also, he thought Hansol was trying real hard to be a real Gregory Peck type and he was almost there, too, only his wardrobe could use a little ironing, and Hansol said Seungkwan would make a great Princess Ann, he had the pout down perfect. 

And they drove on. 

In his dream, Hansol imagined them driving past the LA county lines, past, even, the California state boundary, through calm lavender mornings and the shadowy maw of the night.

Away from that fog. Into the beaming horizon. 

The dream would end, eventually. All dreams did. But for the moment he was submerged in some well-earned peace.

Hansol jolted awake to the sound of his telephone ringing for the first time since his mother had called those (four? five?) unfathomable few days ago. 

“Monday to Saturday Cafe,” the soft deep voice on the other end said. “Korean place down on the boardwalk. Let’s get brunch?”

“Far out,” he mumbled, massaging his temple. He'd pick Chan up afterward. Then they could finally dig into the Choi plot.

Monday to Saturday was between a surf shop and an American brunch place that seemed to be getting most of the customers. It was a slightly shabby but well-lit little space, olive-colored leather booths and lots of Joseon era paintings of mountains and trees. There weren't any other customers except a Korean kid in a floppy black sunhat digging into some chicken.

Mingyu was waiting for him at a table, wearing large tinted sunglasses and a half-unbuttoned Hawaiian print shirt. “Hey, so I got an update last night from the FBI,” he said perhaps a little too loudly when Hansol slid into the booth. 

“Shh!”

“Sorry sorry. I’m, like, really used to having to talk over our drummer. Anyways. They recognized you at the snitch house.”

He’d already ordered for them, and Hansol shoveled a bindaetteok in his mouth and thought while he chewed.

“The feds were there at the party?”

“Well, in a way. Plenty of informants recognized you. You're on their list cos of Seungkwan.”

“What did they say? More vague threats, tryna get me to stop digging?”

Mingyu shrugged. He was holding something back. Looked a little shaken, actually. 

“Yeah, somethin like that. But…they saw you yesterday, too.”

“Yesterday?” Hansol frowned.

Mingyu glanced around the mostly empty restaurant and at that other customer, hesitating. 

An old song Hansol recognized from sticky nights at his father’s store was playing. Somber violins, a man lamenting moving away from home to live in an unfamiliar province.

All tinny and white noise polluted from the stereo buzz. It was giving Hansol the shivers.

“You were at the Talent Agency with your friend yesterday? The one who came to the party with you?”

“Yeah…?”

The singer’s yearning voice fizzled out into static. 

“Well, have you seen him today?”

A cold marble dropped through Hansol’s stomach.

Yesterday Chan had set off for home on foot, hadn't he. 

“Oh god. Fuck. Are you saying—?”

“Visit the Sanatorium,” Mingyu whispered. “Choi has the answers.”

“Okay. Okay.” 

He was on his way up when the bassist grabbed his sleeve and pulled him close.

“Did you get the chance to talk to Minghao?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

Mingyu had something broken in his eyes like he knew Hansol was lying.

“Please.” 

“Right on. Thank you,” Hansol said again, uselessly, and took off sprinting past the Korean kid still blithely attacking his food, around the dozing sun tanners on the grass, the college students on their boards with no care in the cosmos, his heartbeat drumming damn near up his throat and onto his tongue.

Chan should’ve been out there right alongside those innocents. Not pulled into all of the bullshit of the adult world he’d been so naively excited to enter.

Outside Chan’s house, he rang the doorbell, breathless, doubled over for air. Chan’s mom opened the door. 

“Hansollie?”

In rusty Korean, “Ajumma, did Chan come home last night?”

“I thought he spent the night at your place?”

Oh shit. Oh shit. 

He wheeled right around, ignoring her frantic questions.

Choi has the answers. Choi has the answers. 

He stumbled to his driveway, the words ringing in his ear, and got in the car. The brochure for the Sanatorium was in the glovebox. He set out, alone.


	5. We’re All Just People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for character drugged without consent

Second Life Sanatorium reminded him of those old Greek white columnar buildings, only it stretched up to the clouds, stacked with multiple tiers. It was at once completely pretentious and starkly intimidating. Despite its harsh appearance, the front of it was painted in purple with the cheerful phrase, _Bloom Again!_

Hansol’s stomach turned just looking at it. 

Out past the large, heavy-looking doors, a verdant lawn rolled out towards the parking lot like a grassy red carpet. Residents of the Sanatorium relaxed on the lawn in folding chairs, reading books, rocking back and forth. 

Their eyes had the same empty look of those actors at the talent agency. They were in uniform white, except for small brooches in the shape of purple flowers pinned to their lapels.

Hansol wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans as he walked past them. He wondered if Choi was in a similarly conked out situation. He realized he didn’t have the slightest semblance of a plan.

For once he didn’t have intuition ringing in his head, either. 

Just had the kind of silence that surfers get forced into after a wave overwhelms their balance and they go tumbling down, down, into the white froth, the rush of the sea the only sound pressing in, forgetting which way to go for air. 

Alongside the knowledge that somewhere inside might be the answer to all his questions. 

He was greeted at the door of the Sanatorium by a man in a lab coat, who looked him up and down with great suspicion. The lapel of his coat was embroidered with a small purple blossom.

“Well, hello, sir! Would you like to, er, use our facilities? Or are you just here for a tour?”

"Um, here for a tour."

The lobby bled out into room after room full of those white-robed patients and doctors in lab coats. Hansol hardly took anything in, too busy feeling numb, searching for Choi’s big eyes and gentle face in each white-walled healing space, crystal-covered deck balcony, chandeliered dining room.

What he did notice, though, was that every patient floating by had that exact same knocked out blissful look. 

Like they were all _on_ something.

He wondered if the treatment plan used by the Sanatorium involved the Fallin Flower's product. He recalled a phrase on the brochure, in the mission statement for the Sanatorium.

_As long as American life is something to escape from..._

He came back to Earth and his mission when they reentered the lobby a few long minutes later, no sight of Choi yet.

“Ah, and here’s the Healing Garden,” his tour guide was saying, pointing to a thick swath of green outside some glass doors. “In fact, if you’d like, feel free to take some time to relax outside and realign your chakras."

"Groovy."

"Well, you look like you could use some restoration. Our patients love to meditate out there. Perhaps you’ll even have some enlightening conversations!”

His seventh sense made its triumphant return, telling him his tour guide was actually pretty close to homing in on some truth.

Hansol waved the man off and stepped into the dense greenery. 

There was a stucco building in the center of the garden. Men in suits were striding in and out, carrying thick, full briefcases. 

Feds. 

Even here, in a place supposedly shielded from politics by the universal tidings of good health and karmic human togetherness. Or whatever.

There was a figure out to the side of the house, alone at an umbrella’d patio table. Hansol stepped closer, hiding behind bundles of tropical leaves. 

It was the man from the photos and the advertisements and the LA real estate empire. The man who was, in some way, maybe the root cause of it all. Looking a bit worse for wear these days though. 

Choi’s eyes were closed and he was slumped sideways in his chair, seeming to be in a very deep sleep, ignorant to all the activity bustling around him. He was in white linen like most of the other patients, minus the familiar purple brooch. His hair was unruly and mussed, overgrown. Occasionally his eyelids flickered with ghosts of rapid eye movement. 

On the table in front of him was a sad little pitcher of water and a cup. The pathetic pretense of amenity. It almost looked like he was some hostage that all the guys in suits had forgotten about. Left out in the sun to waste away.

Hansol crept close, out of sight from the suits, and hunkered down in a seat across from him. The porch of the building where the feds were milling was at a right angle. He felt confident he wouldn't be seen here.

“Mr. Choi?” he hissed. “Mr. Choi!”

Nothing.

“Seungcheol? Cheol?”

Seungcheol’s head lifted in increments. His eyes fluttered open and took their sweet time focusing. 

“Shit,” Hansol muttered, leaning closer to study him.

The poor guy was definitely on something just like all the other patients, pupils blown up near the size of his irises. He concentrated on Hansol gradually and studied his face.

“Hello,” he said dreamily. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Uh…”

“Hey, hey, focus.”

He snapped his fingers in front of Seungcheol, whose head had begun to loll sideways again, eyes kind of rolling back. Hansol wondered if he could slap the guy hard enough to wake him up. But then he saw the water pitcher on the table again and got an idea. 

He grabbed it and upchucked the whole thing on Seungcheol’s head. 

“Wha…!”

Seungcheol sat up straight, coughed and sputtered and shook his head back and forth like a waterlogged dog, spraying droplets. His eyes found Hansol’s face and focused faster this time, still a little hazy, but maybe closer to sober.

“Hey there,” Hansol said. “Could you maybe tell me why you’re here, in your own words?”

Seungcheol frowned, raised a hand to his dripping face but left it there hovering like he’d forgotten he had limbs.

“I’ve been sent here by my friends… because…because I did a bad thing.”

“What? What bad thing?” 

“I tried… I wanted to give all my money away. I wanted to terminate the company.”

“Why’d you do that? You wanted to stop being involved with Fallin Flower? Socksoon?”

That got him agitated. He shook his head slow, then faster, like he couldn't control his own muscles.

“Don’t say- don’t say that name—"

Hansol grabbed the sides of his face to make him still. “Chill out, relax, I’m not with them.”

“No?”

“I’m with Seungkwan.”

At the name, Seungcheol’s eyes cleared a little more. “Seungkwan?” 

“Yeah. You know him, don't you.”

“He’s a good person…a good friend…he…” His lips grew wobbly. His eyes flitted back and forth like he was searching for something.

“What? What?”

“He showed me how… how my dad had spent his whole life just using people and hurting people and..."

Seungcheol let out a sputtering gasp and shook his head.

"How did Appa do that…? For so long? We’re all just people. We’re all just people.”

“So then what? What did you do?”

He shuddered and said nothing. Desperate, Hansol grabbed a fistful of his soaked linen shirt and shook him hard.

"What happened? What did you do?”

“The F-Flower…had an agreement with Appa. They were moving through his properties on the beach… the company gets a cut of the profits. The police are in on it. The feds are, too. When Appa died three years ago he- he signed off on the ship. They’ve been using that ever since.” He shook his head jerkily. “I just— just wanted to stop it. Seungkwan was right. You shouldn’t use people like that. You shouldn’t…”

“You tried to cut ties with them?"

"Yes..."

"But they didn’t like that… Jeonghan and Joshua wanted to protect you from them, so they sent you here and blamed Seungkwan… told... told Socksoon…”

Seungcheol nodded. Hansol felt he was approaching the jagged edge of the heart of the mystery. 

“Where’s Seungkwan right now?"

When there was silence Hansol grew frantic.

"Come on, man. I'm begging you. You must’ve overheard things from all these goddamn FBI agents crawling around this place. You must’ve heard things about his location- and, and what about Chan Lee?”

Seungcheol's lips worked, his eyes darting from side to side. Eventually the words formed.

“They’re on the ship."

The ship? The cruise ship, Fallin Flower, on which Seungkwan was supposedly hidden away?

“Bullshit. She’s supposed to be halfway to the Bermuda Triangle by now. No way Chan's onboard too."

Seungcheol’s eyes grew dim again, his long lashes blinking sleepily. He gave his head a violent shake to try and fight it. 

“Still in the harbor,” he said, nearly indiscernible.

_“What?"_

Still in the harbor? 

Somewhere in that fog, so close? Some mere feet away?

_All along?_

"Still in the— are you sure?” 

It was almost poetic that it was all happening right under his nose. Just like everything else. There was a groovy metaphor inside that, wasn't there.

"Don't go there," Seungcheol warned. "Don't go there. Socksoon..."

"Socksoon? Socksoon _what? Who is Socksoon?"_

But Seungcheol wouldn’t say anything else.

His head dipped down, slowly, losing the battle. The water from the pitcher trickled down his face like tears. Hansol felt a real spike of pity. He reached over with the sleeve of his jacket and wiped some of it away.

Shit. He was supposed to be helping Seungcheol, not just using him towards his own ends.

Seungcheol was a good person. His story and the earnest desperate way he'd tried to make Hansol understand, despite the whole fucked up situation, proved it. And besides. Seungkwan wouldn't have genuinely wanted to help him if the opposite was true.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Hansol said, fighting to keep his voice level. “You don’t belong in here, man. All brainwashed and junked up. Seungkwan said you’re a good person. So come on…come with me to find him.”

Seungcheol said in the softest of whispers— “They’re helping me forget…” 

“Forget what?” 

Hansol shook his shoulder hard, but he was out.

Fuck. 

He had a sudden hunch, dug in his pocket for the Polaroid he’d stolen from Seungcheol’s bedroom. Maybe seeing Seungkwan's face would jostle him enough out of his haze. He slipped it under Seungcheol’s slack hand. 

Hansol moved away from the table in a daze, crept behind fronds, watching the FBI agents and their briefcases shuttle back and forth.

Thought about Seungcheol’s words as his pulse pounded. 

Forget what…? 

Well, forget about his father?

Forget that his livelihood was built on the trade of dark forces and their vile disciples? 

Forget that all corporations and institutions in the world only existed to further their own purposes, that evil had infiltrated into most or all of those systems supposedly by, for, and of the people?

That innocent people like Seungkwan would get pulled away in the undertow, inevitably?

He thought about what Seungkwan had said on the beach that distant night in the past:

There are so many things going on, underneath it all. Things that we won’t know about until it’s too late. 

Bitterly he thought that he hadn’t asked to uncover all of this insane baggage. Of course he hadn’t wanted to dig himself so deep into the shadows of American life. He’d just wanted Seungkwan back. That was it. 

He was starting to think Seungcheol was onto something. Maybe it really was better to go on with life drugged and happy and blind, forget it all.

No. No, he couldn’t.

Because Seungkwan was tied up in it, and Hansol couldn’t forget him. It was psychically, karmically impossible. Seungkwan was too deep within his soul, in the soft secured folds of his heart that came alive at dawn and guided him towards the sun. He couldn’t forget. 

Seungkwan had believed Hansol could fix this, somehow. That was all he needed. 

He emerged from Second Life melancholy and shaken but fixed on his mission to the sight of Wonwoo, leaning against his police cruiser. 

His El Camino was nowhere in sight.

“Your car’s been impounded, Chwe,” Wonwoo said. “You were illegally parked. Get in, I’ll take you to the lot.”

He didn’t even have the energy to snark back or argue, just silently obeyed.

Wonwoo glanced over at his despondent form as they rolled towards the lot and for once didn’t have anything smug to say. 

“Are you okay, Chwe? No weird spaced out monologues today?”

“I’ll meet you at the station after you drop me off,” Hansol muttered. “I need some help. This is... this is real shit, man.”

  
  


Later at the station, he made his desperate request.

“That’s a tall order,” Wonwoo said, but he looked like he was considering. “Seriously though. Do you want a glass of water or something? You’re not looking super peachy.”

“I don’t have time for this. Let's fucking go.” 

Wonwoo narrowed his eyes.

"Alright. Fine. I actually already have a search warrant for the Fallin Flower cruise vessel,” he revealed. “It took three months and five different federal agents showing up on my doorstep, but I have it.”

“Okay. Okay okay great. Fucking groovy. You need to come with me, then. Wonwoo, I know this for _certain._ From the mouth of the horse itself, so to speak.”

“You met with Choi?”

“He’s in FBI custody at Second Life Sanatorium.”

“Yeah, I know," Wonwoo said.

"You— _what?_ You know?" Hansol spluttered.

"Well, yeah. I'm not stupid. I know what's going on in his company, his properties. What the hell do you think I've been investigating the last few years? The minute Seungkwan and Choi both went missing and that heroin popped up at Swimming Fool, I knew. And I figured that’s why you were parked at the Sanatorium in the first place.” 

"So then— so then why did you try and suggest _I_ was involved with it?"

"Well, mostly to keep you from getting too deep in it. But you did that anyway, all on your own, didn't you."

"Not all on my own," Hansol muttered. "I've had help."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Wonwoo. We're wasting time. Seungkwan is _right_ there. I need your help."

Wonwoo stabbed his pen into the table a few times. It looked like heavy cogs were turning in his brain.

“Hansol, I should also let you know— Mingyu’s gone missing. For real this time.”

“What?”

Wonwoo glanced around and lowered his voice to a hiss. “I have sources keeping tabs on the snitch house.” 

Whoa. Informants informing on informants. 

“FBI and the Flower found out he met with you at Monday to Saturday this morning. He never came back to the house after that.”

“Okay, all the more reason for you to come with me and search the cruise ship, he’s probably been hidden somewhere in that fucking thing too."

"Trust me, the warrant isn't going to help," Wonwoo said. He sounded almost resigned. Hansol tried to protest but Wonwoo spoke over him again. "They know what they're goddamn doing. Everyone's in on it, Hansol. Everyone. We can never catch 'em with their pants down because the fucking police pulls them right back up again."

"So you're telling me to, what, to give up? To just let him rot out there?"

"No. I just— let's think about this. Let's wait. Let's come up with a strategy."

Hansol felt things he didn't know how to express. All he could muster up was a quiet, desperate, "Wonwoo, don't let them do this. They can’t just keep doing this. Jesus, and it probably has something to do with Socksoon—”

 _“Shh!!”_ Wonwoo was uncharacteristically bugging out, his eyes wide. “Don’t mention that name out loud, dumbass. Ever.”

“Tell me who the fuck they are, then."

The stack of folders Wonwoo locked Hansol in the records room with, as an answer to his question, rose up nearly to his forehead. 

He opened the topmost file: TOP SECRET in red stamped letters, and the profiles of two men.

Seokmin Lee and Soonyoung Kwon. 

Oh…Seokmin and Soonyoung.

Seok Soon.

Socksoon. 

Huh. So it was two separate words after all.

He flipped through the files for hours. He pored through them thoroughly at first, then got more and more uneasy— bodies found in the harbor, people gone missing, people never the same again.

And all with the Department of Justice and the LAPD’s knowing consent. 

Well, actually it seemed like most of these deeds were done _at_ _the fed’s request._ All of the files had tricky links to protests, police trials, government men, the mayor, sons of officers… 

He drew the lines himself.

Seokmin and Soonyoung worked for Fallin Flower the cartel in some capacity. Fallin Flower, Choi’s company, and the FBI had a sort of deal going, thanks to Choi’s father.

It seemed that Seoksoon took care of any unsavory business for the feds, in exchange for free movement of their employer’s products through Choi’s properties on the beach. Apparently they’d been arrested multiple times, but every round, police would question them as a formality, and release them on technicalities.

Hansol went back to the top of the pile and studied the paperclipped photographs of the two young men. The file said Kwon was two years older than him. Lee only one year. He wondered how they'd wormed their way into their current lots in life.

They looked friendly enough. Kwon had a shit-eating grin that curved his eyes into friendly twin crescents, and next to him Lee’s smile was bright as the glint of light on water. If Hansol had been ignorant of their long and storied pasts maybe he would’ve wanted to get a drink with them. 

Perhaps he and Seungkwan had even walked past Kwon and Lee before, on the boardwalk, in the sand, in restaurants, in cafes, in bars at night, knowing nothing…

The latest in a long line of cloudy presences hanging beneath the visible world. Right under their noses. 

He should’ve felt surprised or disturbed, but only felt the slow steady burn of resolve. Seungkwan was in the harbor. And so, evidently, were Seoksoon.

He was riding on the karmic thermals of his intuition and Seungkwan's trust and the boardwalk, too, all of it speaking to him at once. Telling him it was now or never, with or without Wonwoo's help.

He put the files down and exited the station.


	6. Whither To?

Wonwoo was gone when Hansol emerged. He took it as a sign. Free permission to check the harbor out himself.

He drove all the way there in silence, knuckles white and bloodless on the steering wheel. Night had fallen during the hours he'd spent in the records room. The darkness outside was complete, ripe with portent. 

Lately, after a certain hour, there had been less and less of those easygoing carefree beachgoers on wild goose chases for pot or a good time. The hippies had been sensing the shift of the land and the sea.

Just like Hansol, they were awakening to the underlayers.

He drove straight from the road onto the gritty planks of the waterfront, the eerie silence like an echo chamber for his own thoughts. There was certainly a chance he wasn't going to make it out of here. That Seungkwan, Mingyu, and Chan wouldn't, either. 

He'd known that from the minute Seungkwan had shown up at his doorway. That this would be a case like no other. That it hit and sunk much too close to home, quite literally. An end all or be all for the beach. 

Towards the ends of the harbor, nothing seemed too amiss, if you could ignore the massive cruise ship that had risen up out of the marine gloom apparently in the last few hours. Newly moored right to the dock. Its gangway unfurled, like it was waiting just for him. 

Hansol could make out the white, bright letters in the swirling nebulous soup.

_Fallin Flower._

He parked the car at the sodden edge of the dock, hearing his own heavy breath in his ears. He tried to relax his drumming heartbeat by turning the radio up for a minute. But the bright jingling tune of the pop song that came on too loud, telling him that people were havin fun and makin love under the boardwalk, couldn’t quite hide the sinister vibrations.

His seventh sense spoke to him. An indirect from thoughts of the ship.

Check the car trunk, man. No way Wonwoo would make things this easy for you. 

He listened. He turned the radio off, scrambled out, and flipped the trunk open. 

Oh, Detective Wonwoo Jeon, you absolute motherfucker. 

Hansol stared down at boxes and boxes. Taped up real tight. Just like the one he'd been found with outside Swimming Fool.

Looked to be around 20 kilograms of solid inconvenience, probably gathered up straight from the evidence room, from months and months of collection. Planted in his car, likely before Wonwoo took it to the impoundment lot from the Sanatorium. 

The station lot had been quiet when he'd left. As in, numerous squad cars mysteriously gone. He squinted past the miasma of stale sea stench. Wondered if Wonwoo's work was coming to a head tonight, and Hansol was his way in, and all those cars were parked somewhere just out of sight.

Perhaps he was the scapegoat. The person Wonwoo, having frustrated all his efforts, was going to pin everything on.

Well, roll with it, Hansol. Everything happens for a reason.

Doesn’t it?

He closed the trunk and took a deep breath. No officers came sprinting out, guns a-blazing. No sudden wails of sirens.

Maybe he really was alone. Either way, nothing to do but go forth.

As he approached the gangway, the dead ocean stench rotting and oppressive, two dark figures emerged from the hull. 

They stood waiting on deck for Hansol, obscured in the night. Somehow that song from the radio was still playing, the cheerful one about sweet seaside summers, and at first he thought it was in his head. But then he realized it was coming from somewhere inside the ship. 

He climbed up step after wary step. At the top of the gangway, Seokmin Lee and Soonyoung Kwon were both in T-shirts and overalls, looking pretty chilled out. As Soonyoung, who was wearing a floppy black hat, came into focus, Hansol suddenly placed where he'd seen his beaming face before.

That Korean kid from Monday to Saturday. Listening in on his and Mingyu's conversation.

Next to him, Seokmin held out an arm for a handshake, his smile exuberant. Hansol took it with no small reluctance. 

“What an honor! I’ve been absolutely dying to meet you! No pun intended. You’re, like, a small celebrity in the Flower community.” 

Somehow the man's bright tones sounded real familiar.

“Hold on… you... your voice—”

Seokmin’s grin grew even larger if possible. His tone took on a hyperactive punch. “This is SVT LA, transmitting from the high seas!”

“Holy shit."

“Nice to be recognized. Soonyoung says my radio show is kinda pointless, but I know it's some people's favorite station. It’s a good hobby to have on a ship with only this guy and occasionally some singers to talk to. Keeps us sane, you know."

Seokmin winked. Like he knew, for a fact, that Hansol was an avid listener. 

But maybe that was just Hansol's imagination...

"Well, staking people out also helps with keeping sane," Soonyoung put in, waggling his eyebrows.

Ah. It was beginning to make sense. The heroin planted outside Swimming Fool. Ominous presences at Driftaway Drive. The postcard.

"By people, I'm assuming you mean me," Hansol muttered.

Soonyoung draped an arm over Hansol's shoulder, cheerfully steering him down the deck.

“You’ve given us some trouble this week, haven’t you? Soon as Boo visited your place, we got the hunch you’d be a bit of a problem. We thought the postcard would throw you off the scent. But you really get around quick.”

He sounded interested in a way that wasn’t faked. Like he was genuinely kind of curious.

“To be honest, man,” Hansol said, trying not to slip on the deck in his flip flops as he was pushed forward, “I didn’t mean for it to get this far. Like, seriously…that was never my, like intention. I just kind of follow my nose. Guess you guys were makin a real obvious stink.”

Seokmin and Soonyoung both bust into chortles. “Yeah, like dead fish…”

“...and salt fog?”

He was being frogmarched into a real nice dining room, red and brown trimmings, lots of indulgent lighting. The pop music was coming from the next room over.

They sat him down firmly at a table and grinned at him with concerning amounts of excitement.

Everything felt kind of unreal, like Hansol was watching a movie, or having an out of body experience. He had no plan at all. He was just coasting on the breeze.

“Want a drink?” Seokmin asked.

“Nah, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

“Smoke?”

Soonyoung dug inside his overall pocket and revealed a rolled-up joint. Hansol glanced around at them.

“Well, I’d hate to spoil the party…” 

Soonyoung lit up and passed it to him, and he took a hit during which they both stared at him, expectant.

He was reminded of two cats, tails twitching, waiting.

Hansol cleared his throat and handed the joint off to Seokmin. “So…how long you two been working for the Flower?”

“Oh, just the last two, three years. When we’re not docked we perform on the cruise, actually. Soonyoung’s a great dancer. The man can get down.”

Seokmin passed the joint to his partner, who elaborated. “Yeah, y'know, technically, we don’t actually work _for_ the Flower. We’re just on contract. Have been on and off. Like, um, temps, I suppose?”

Hansol raised his eyebrows. “Sure have been doing a lot of damage for two temps…” 

“Yeah, well, I personally like to characterize myself as morally grey,” Soonyoung said. “As in, like, I just do my job. Don’t ask many questions.”

The song petered off.

“Oh, excuse me,” Seokmin said, passing the joint hurriedly back to Hansol. “Gotta go make my announcements. You know how it is.”

Hansol watched him go, everything kind of lagging already. Tinnily, he heard Seokmin’s voice on the airwaves—

“Here’s a special little tune for all you night owls, pokin’ around in places you shouldn’t be. Sometimes you just gotta know when to turn that train around. Here’s Back Up Train by Al Green!”

Seokmin skipped back into the room seconds later, beaming at Hansol’s face. “Pretty good, huh?”

He almost wanted to laugh at the increasingly absurd circumstances. “Uh huh. You got a real talent, man.” 

“ _Th_ _ank_ you!” Seokmin took the joint back and propped his feet up on the table. "I generally stay onboard, take care of the hostages and the, er, shipment. Soonyoung here is more a lover of the physical stuff."

"So...so he's the one doing most of the dirty work?"

"It's only dirty if you make it dirty," Soonyoung pronounced with great wisdom.

Hansol shook himself to concentrate, the slow smooth song making him feel strangely woozy.

You’re almost there, Hansol. You’re almost there.

“So, uhh, do you two know what exactly the Flower’s been up to on the Beach? Historically speaking?”

“Well, we have a vague sense,” Seokmin said, “but we try not to get too involved. Knowing the context kinda takes the rush out of it.”

“Why do you do it, then?”

Soonyoung leaned back in his chair, pulling on the joint bemusedly.

“Why do we do our jobs?”

“Well, yeah.”

They exchanged a meaningful glance, like this was something they often liked to talk about. 

“Hey, look, if you told us four, five years ago we’d be doing this kind of work for this kind of employer…”

“We woulda told you to flake off.”

“But things have changed since then. The Summer of Love’s dead, literally. Manson’s come and gone, an innocent girl was killed at a Stones concert..."

"...and through it all, Nam’s still raging on.” 

“You see the problem? Nowadays the Man seems to pop up everywhere, around every corner. Go to any city in America. He’s there, too, in the corners. Hidin under cars at night..."

"...recordin everything...”

“...watching..."

"...waiting.”

Whatever they were smoking, it was real strong. Things were getting syrupy.

Hansol licked his lips, his mouth practically cardboard. He thought he heard a noise behind him but stopped himself from checking.

He kept forgetting what had happened three, five seconds ago. Each moment seemed new and mutable. His heart was pounding. He could feel his muscles going loose, too loose.

The radio hissed off into static and now Seokmin didn’t bother getting up to tend to it.

“So… so what does the Flower have to do with...with the Man?” he asked them. "Who is the Man?"

"The Man is everything and everyone these days."

"The Man is the feds, hiding at Driftaway Drive."

"The Man is the cops getting away with murder."

"The Man is corporations and institutions and Seungcheol Choi's father and the people before Seungcheol Choi's father."

“And the Flower," Soonyoung said with finality, smoke drifting from his mouth like ectoplasm, "is just a symptom of His stink.”

“So from your view, it’s... it's too late to change anything? You just go along with the tides? If you can’t beat em, join em?”

Soonyoung sighed. “Sometimes it’s easier to pretend you’re in a bubble.”

Hansol frowned. 

“Sorry,” he said, “but that sounds like horse shit to me.”

“Well, then you’re a courageous man,” Seokmin said. “Something to be said for that.”

"Do you really think anything you do will ever make a difference?"

"Don't you think the rip currents below the surface are just too strong?"

“The world is two-faced,” Soonyoung said grandly, looking out into a porthole to the distant black horizon. “There’s no one to trust. You’ve only chipped away at the tiniest corner. If you saw the whole thing it’d be enough to make you lose your mind. We all have methods of getting by, don’t we.”

“I guess," Hansol said. He thought of Seungcheol.

And he thought of Seungkwan slipping away in the night. 

That had taken a lot. Would he have done the same?

It didn't matter. Because he'd made it here.

His thoughts were finally sticking. It didn't matter. None of this mattered. Soonyoung and Seokmin were talking in abstracts. But Seungkwan wasn't an abstract. 

Seungkwan was real. And he was here on this ship, somewhere. 

Hansol knew, increasingly, that they were just talking in circles that wouldn’t end unless he drew a brave line. It was either going to end in oblivion or everything.

“Listen, uh, it took a great deal of effort to get here, and now that I’m, uh, present, body-wise, I’d like to make a request.”

“Ooh!” Seokmin snapped like he was at a poetry reading in Greenwich Village. “I love it. Go on, then.”

Okay, okay. He was skating on thin ice…getting close to the transparent center. Some nimble tact and wit would be required— 

“Give me my friends back. All of them. Seungkwan, Mingyu, Chan.”

Shit. Probably not the best starting point?

“Hmm.” Soonyoung drummed on the table. “It’s an intriguing request.”

“Yeah, but help us figure it out here."

"Why, exactly, should we do that?”

Out of the blue, his seventh sense beamed like a spotlight in his addled brain. 

No tact and wit necessary, Hansol. You got Detective Wonwoo Jeon on your side.

Hansol leaned forward across the table. 

“Cus I got about 20 kilos of some property that belongs to you, right in my car trunk. And about half the detective force of the LAPD watching."

That gave both of them genuine pause. 

Hansol smiled, slowly. "That property I have is worth, what?”

"About 2 mills worth of heroin," Soonyoung muttered. His eyes darted over at Seokmin, who almost looked amused.

“Look, I can either hand the shipment over right now in return for all my friends, or pull a Boston Tea Party right into this harbor. Let’s see how fast your employers turn on you then.”

“Wow, that’s pretty heinous,” Seokmin said, nearly smiling, like he approved.

Hansol sighed. “Come on, man. Just give me my friends back and we’ll get out of this whole mess and forget about it. You’re not, like, _completely_ heartless killers.”

“We are a little bit, though,” Soonyoung said, despite looking pretty contemplative.

“I meant, like, deep down, man.”

“I suppose it depends on who you ask and the day of the week and all,” Seokmin said, thoughtful. He pressed the burnt-out stub of the joint into the expensive table. “Whaddya say, Soon?” 

“I mean, I guess we could always just shoot you,” Soonyoung ruminated. “But I kind of admire the balls it took to do that?"

"True," Seokmin said. "I mean, seriously, not everyone could haggle with us like they’re a fish market on a Saturday morn. You’re pretty cool, man.”

“You really care about those people, don't you," Soonyoung said. He frowned a little mockingly. "Guess that must be nice, huh!"

Hansol cleared his throat. Hardly daring to believe it.

“So? Two million US dollars worth of tar for Seungkwan, Chan, _and_ Mingyu? ...jeez, it’s like you guys are startin a boyband or somethin.”

“Man, you really are pretty funny!”

  
  
  


They led him out of the room, his head feeling like it was floating away from his body. The increasingly surreal colors and noises around him felt like they were going frame by frame. He was being taken down some bright blue steps, into another carbon copy of the nice dining room above.

Seated round a table were three people handcuffed to their chairs, gagged. When Hansol walked in he nearly collapsed with relief.

Three people. The deal was good.

His eyes traveled from face to face— Chan, wide-eyed, incredulous; Mingyu, terrified, helpless.

And— Seungcheol Choi. 

Wait. Seungcheol Choi?

He whirled on them. The blurry shapes and sounds encroaching and building pressure up in his head.

“Where’s Seungkwan?”

“Oh, shit, sorry, we forgot to tell you. Flower deemed him good to go.”

Hansol blanched. 

“Good to— good to go—?”

“He's gone."

Hansol let out a shaky breath. His stomach swooped down into his toes. "He's gone? He's- he's gone? What the- what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"He's gone, as in, he's _out there,_ man," Seokmin said, his eyes widening.

"As in... we let him go."

He could only breathe for a second, the sound grating in his throat and his eardrums.

_“What the fuck?”_

“Well, Choi here apparently came alive once you left the Sanatorium. He demanded they release Seungkwan in exchange for putting him in our direct custody.”

Seungcheol grimaced tightly up at him, still looking a little pale, slightly hazy. 

“Oh,” Hansol said, his chest still heaving, his own small voice foreign to his ears. “And now... now you’re gonna have to let him go anyway. Kind of a waste. But why'd you... why'd you do that? Why'd you let Seungkwan go? Doesn't he know too much?"

"We all know too much, Hansol," Seokmin said. "Have you ever heard of inherent vice?"

"No..."

"In entertainment and media law," Soonyoung said, "it refers to the tendency of things to deteriorate because of their fundamental instability. Like analog videotape. Cellulose acetate film. Contracts." 

"Everything has inherent vice," Seokmin said. He had made his way over to the table and was freeing his hostages, one by one, his motions deliberate and quick.

"This cruise ship has inherent vice. The boardwalk has inherent vice. So does Fallin Flower. Los Angeles. America."

"And...people?"

"People, too."

"It'll all detoriorate," Soonyoung said, "sooner or later. Just as your own little world has, in this last week."

"It wasn't worth it to kill Seungkwan," Seokmin translated. "Plus, I'll be the first to admit, we kinda got along pretty well. He says I might have a singing career in front of me too! If I ever stop being a contract killer and all that."

“And besides.” Soonyoung shrugged. “You win some, you lose some…”

“...a detective seizes your heroin, you get it all back months later.”

“To think. You really kind of came out the winner here, and you didn’t even know what you were doing half the time!” 

“Of course I knew what the hell I was doing,” Hansol said, mildly offended, but was interrupted by Chan flying into his arms, exclaiming loudly, a bundle of sobbing disbelief. Mingyu stood, too, helping Seungcheol up, and they all gathered close around Hansol like he was the Pied Piper or something, like they couldn't quite believe what had just taken place.

Soonyoung cleared his throat. “This is very touching and all, but if you’d just hand over those keys we’re gonna go take back what’s ours, and the happy family had better get outta here quick.” 

Hansol threw them his keys. He busied himself with checking up on the three of them, ensuring they weren’t too damaged. Given all that inherent vice talk and all.

But things seemed mostly in order. Strange, wasn't it.

He supposed Seoksoon weren’t what he'd expected. More weirdly philosophical than anything.

Like they were completely aware of the sonorous and invisible vibrations of the world. They had seen everything, but acted on nothing.

Probably because they were solid in the knowledge that things, sooner or later, would give way. Was it better to keep caring and loving and living despite knowing that fact, but inevitably end up damaged and broken when things went awry? Or was it better to do what Seoksoon did? 

Hansol didn't have the answers.

He, Mingyu, Chan, and Seungcheol watched anxiously from the dock as Soonyoung and Seokmin carted the boxes from the car to the top of the gangway. Hansol was getting a prickle on the back of his neck. He sensed that Wonwoo, like a big cat cornering his prey, was hovering close. Assumed he would make his presence felt very soon.

The last box was ferried up. Soonyoung tossed him the keys and Seokmin gave him a grim salute, both grinning hysterically as they retreated back up the gangway and into the jaws of the ship once more.

And now, there was only one thing left.

Seungkwan.

At the center, the beginning, and the quickly approaching end of it.

Hansol wondered about the postcard. 

_I don’t think I’ll ever find someone like you again._

Was it true? Was any of it?

Did it ever end?

It would.

It did.

  
  


First, though, they made their stop at Mingyu and Minghao’s place.

Mingyu was in the passenger seat, kind of curled up trying to make himself smaller, looking real anxious as he looked out at their little house. Presumably imagining Minghao inside, wondering how things had shifted. 

“Hey,” he said awkwardly, not really looking at Hansol, “I don’t know how to thank you. I literally owe you my life, man.”

“You nervous?”

He gave a tiny nod. 

“Well, it’s yours now,” Hansol said. “Your life is yours. Go and live it.”

Mingyu exhaled deeply, pursing his lips, then nodded once. He swung the door open and pushed his lengthy legs out.

But before he left, he turned back to look at Hansol. His eyes very earnest, very kind.

“Hansol, I hope… I hope… you know. You…you’re a real good person. I hope Seungkwan finds his way back to you.”

Hansol bowed his head and huffed out something he hoped sounded like a laugh. Knowing his smile had dropped irretrievably. 

He watched from the car as Mingyu trudged up the path to the front door, rang the doorbell, waited. 

The door flung open in all of two seconds. Hansol could hear Minghao’s happy exclamations all the way from the car. Mingyu embraced Minghao, wholly engulfing his slender form, and held him close and tight.

From the door Mingyu looked up and caught Hansol's gaze a final time, his cheek pressed tight against Minghao's shoulder, his eyes glimmering with tears of relief.

He mouthed, _thank you._

Hansol's chest ached.

"You're welcome," he whispered.

“He’s gonna show,” Chan said quietly, reaching forward and squeezing Hansol’s shoulder. Chan, his best friend. Who knew without asking just what Hansol was feeling. “He's going to come back to you. It’s gonna be okay.”

Next stop, Chan’s house. Accommodation wise that would only leave Seungcheol, who was scarily quiet in the back, leaning his forehead against a window. He looked like he was on a serious bad trip. 

“Mr. Choi?” Chan asked once they were pulled up to the curb. 

He gave a start and sort of laughed.

“You can call me Seungcheol, man, we were hostages on that boat together for a few hours back there.”

“Do you have any place you can go?”

“Well, I have a few properties that I could probably shack up in.” He looked exhausted, wrung empty. “But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want anything to do with this place or my company anymore. I don’t know.”

Hansol didn’t even need to say anything. Chan beamed at Seungcheol and offered, “Come on in with me. You can crash on our couch. Eomma won’t mind.”

Seungcheol looked hesitantly at Chan, then at Hansol, who had turned around from the driver’s seat to face him. 

“And after that?”

What would come after that?

Velasquez Beach was a seething black hole of inherent vice and nothing but. He could almost feel the boardwalk buckling under the weight of it.

Now that he knew all the crooks and crannies by name, the unsavory damp stench of it all, it would never be the same. The beach would always feel polluted. Transmogrified. 

"I'm leaving the beach," Hansol said softly.

But don’t think of it as running away. All Hansol was doing was running towards another town, another realm of something new. 

That was what the wide world was there for, wasn’t it? All you could do was head out for the horizon and try and heal your wounds. 

“I’m coming with, then,” Chan said, unphased. “Eomma likes getting postcards from new places. You know, maybe I’ll even, like, figure out what the hell I wanna do with my life.”

“Cheol? You think you wanna head out with us?”

Seungcheol looked from face to face, then slowly split into the first real smile Hansol had ever seen from him.

It was answer enough. 

  
  
  


He stepped through the door to the sight of someone standing in the living room and instantly knew. 

It was just like that Friday at the start of it all.

Things coming in on the distant waves, vibrations of greater forces, rising on the wind.

The world, conspiring.

He took in a shaky breath and just stood, rooted to the spot. He couldn't smile because his heart was pounding so loud and his muscles were loose and tense all at once and he felt if he would open his mouth, he would start sobbing from somewhere deep within himself.

The moment was here.

He should never have doubted it. He hadn’t even dared to imagine it, but here it was, rising up outta the fog.

Like a lovely solid ghost.

“Hansol?” 

The blue night mist glowed on Seungkwan’s high cheekbones. He was in a T-shirt and board shorts, dark circles under his eyes. 

But he was smiling, real and disbelieving. Smiling his unaffected wonderful smile.

Standing in the middle of Hansol's living room like he'd always been there, like he'd never left, like the whole terrible thing had never happened, and smiling.

Hansol leaned against the wall for support, a gaping chasm sealing itself up tight somewhere in his chest, and still had it in himself to poke.

“Oh, thinks he’s hallucinating?” with a tired, relieved laugh.

“Come here, you idiot.”

Hansol complied on shaky footing. Seungkwan wrapped his arms around his waist, leaned close just studying his face for a minute.

Hansol closed his eyes and looked down because it felt like he was flying too close to the sun. It felt like there was no possible way he'd made it all the way here. That both of them had. 

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” he whispered at the floor, swallowing hard, his eyebrows furrowing. 

“No, they didn't hurt me. It’s okay. They didn't hurt me. I made it here. I'm here. Still keep the goddamn spare key under the same mat after all this time. Hansol?" He made Hansol look at him. "Are you okay?"

Hansol nodded, his throat working.

"What's wrong?"

For a moment Hansol tried to speak. But he couldn't.

He grabbed Seungkwan's hand, put it on his chest, where his body was singing, and hoped Seungkwan would understand: that this was what destiny was, the two of them, just the two of them.

Forever finding each other, speaking across time, space, oceans. This eternal place.

Sure, things had a tendency to deteriorate eventually. But inside of him, Hansol knew this was the one exception.

This thing. It wasn't always going to be this easy or this simple. But it was always going to be here, inside the two of them. Home.

"It's okay," Seungkwan said softly. He was smiling. "I'm here. I'm here."

Hansol pulled him close against his mouth with a soft noise of relief. The taste of the ocean, warm and pressing, everything good about existing here, in this cosmic moment. Nothing complicated. Everything real.

They stumbled across the floor into the bedroom. Hansol pushed him down onto his covers, caged him between his elbows, just breathing him in, thinking, fuck, being alive on this earth is such a goddamn trip.

“You did so good,” Seungkwan said. “I knew you would. You always do.” 

He kept tracing Seungkwan’s face with his fingers, everything so bright, saturated, alive.

“How did you know? That I could fix it?”

“Because you’re you,” Seungkwan said. "You'd find a way. I just knew."

Hansol buried his face in the crook of his neck, and Seungkwan’s arms encircled him, holding him tight, and he felt his aching smile and his chest burning.

The world was singing, just for them, through the open windows. Sweet and slow, flying real close to the sleeping sun. 

“You came back,” he kept saying. “You came back.”

“You did so good, Hansol. You did so good."

He didn’t remember much of it after that. Just sort of drifted in his happy daze. But he knew it was warm, and it felt like coming home after a long and weary drive.

  
  
  


Next morning, Seungkwan got up before him. Hansol could hear him picking their clothes up off the bedroom floor, fastidious as always. The television’s sound flickered alive. Hansol smiled into the sheets.

He could've stayed like that forever, just drifting, listening to Seungkwan in the next room, humming and puttering away. 

But then, “Sollie, you better come look at this!” 

Hansol groaned.

"Coming, babe."

He pulled himself out of the pits of sated drowsiness enough to sit up straight and eventually pull some clothes on and amble towards the TV. He sat on the futon and Seungkwan wrapped himself around him.

They were interviewing Wonwoo, who was standing straight and proud, for once the smirk on his face rightfully belonging. He was on the deck of a very familiar vessel, as behind him, the other LAPD detectives walked back and forth carting familiar big brown boxes.

Wonwoo was saying, “They've fastidiously dodged our attentions, but our sting operation last night finally discovered evidence on-premises. Of course, we don’t have the information to convict nearly as many people as were involved, and some key characters have made out like bats out of hell. It’s likely the justice system won’t work as we hope it will, but the important thing is, it’s a start.”

“Congratulations on some excellent work, Detective Jeon.”

“Well, Annie,” Wonwoo said, beaming at the reporter, “I owe a lot to a certain young private investigator out on the beach. I won’t embarrass him, but he knows who he is.”

And he winked at the camera. 

Seungkwan screeched with delight and shook Hansol. 

“It’s you! That’s you!” 

Hansol let himself be rocked back and forth and laughed with him. Who woulda thought.

"You know, I couldn't have done it without you."

Seungkwan snorted. _"Me?"_

"Sailors have stars," Hansol said. "And I have you."

"Ohhh, Jesus, you fucking cheese ball."

He didn't let go of Hansol, though. If possible, only squeezed him tighter, his warmth encircling Hansol entirely.

Wonwoo knew what he was talking about, Hansol thought. All of this was just a start. Last night Seokmin Lee and Soonyoung Kwon had been right, in a sense. The Fallin Flower had an expiration date. And now it had begun its crumbling process. 

Hansol assumed the both of them had slipped away out as they always seemed to do, out the back, fading away into the difficult mist. Off to inhabit new horizons. To find new shadows to hide in. 

Or maybe they, too, were rowing off into sunnier tides. Finding better keys of American life to tune themselves to.

One could always hope.

“Sollie, I’m gonna go pick up Chan and Cheol.”

They must’ve discussed it the night previous. Hansol nodded, tipped his head sideways to let Seungkwan leave a soft lingering kiss on his cheek. He heard the car start up and didn’t feel a single flicker of apprehension. 

Seungkwan had already come back to him. For good, now. 

He stood up eventually, his face aching from smiling, and dialed for Chwe Home Goods. 

“Hey, mom.”

His mom sighed, long-suffering, endlessly patient.

“Hansol. It was you, wasn’t it? Detective Jeon was talking about you?”

He nodded then laughed at himself. 

“Yeah, mom. Yeah. It was me.”

She didn't say anything for a few seconds, then, quietly, like her voice would break if it was any louder, “I’m proud of you, Hansol.”

“Mom,” he said, wrapping the cord around his finger tightly, “I’m driving out today. For good, I mean.”

There was a slight rush of static on the other end of the phone. But then he could hear the smile in her voice.

“Good luck, sweetie.”

He heard the car in the driveway. 

“I'm sorry for making you worry. All those times. But I know what I'm doing, Mom. I know what I'm doing. I always did. Seungkwan's coming with me. I just- I need to follow the sun. That's how I am, Mom. Seungkwan knows. Seungkwan knows me so well.”

"I know, Hansol, I know."

He released the cord from his fingers. It sprung free and he watched it oscillate, something filling itself complete in his heart.

"Bye, Mom. Love you."

He hung up and looked over his-and-Seungkwan's shack.

All the posters Seungkwan had stuck on the walls with unerring precision. Their favorite rugs. Records still in their sleeves ranging from classical to folk. Fridge full of old beer and dust. The Ouija board out in the languid sun. 

The postcard Seungkwan had sent. 

It was time. Wasn't it?

Hansol exited out front, taking only the keys and that postcard. He took a deep, bracing breath of the familiar morning air. 

Then he got in the driver’s seat, the sun beaming on his face. 

“Whither to?” he asked.

“Well, babe. Let’s just go wherever this car takes us,” Seungkwan said, smiling. 

Hansol started the car.

He took stock of his seaside microcosm one last time as they made off for good. In the back Chan was asking Seungcheol, “So, like, if we sold your earrings, we’d make ten thousand dollars?” and Seungcheol was giving him a very thoughtful response, a cap pulled low over his eyes, and in the front, Seungkwan was holding onto Hansol’s hand for dear life, a natural grin on his face like he didn’t even know it was there. 

If they headed up the Pacific Coast Highway they’d make it up to the Bay and past it, even, into the shivering evergreens of Oregon and Washington. They could take the 80, too, into the flatlands and down through New York, take a bite out of the East Coast.

The fog would be lighter, maybe, than it was here, all of a sudden so thick it obscured the exit signs and the tires.

The speedometer and Seungkwan’s hair whipping into his face the only way Hansol knew they were moving.

Moving away from it all. Into the bright future.

And Hansol drove them through the early morning mist and up the hills and past the wonderful people and terrible people, all those people, stretching on for eternity, their inexorable mixed up stories burning on and on into the future. Borne away on the endless seas. 

The radio blasting Chuck Jackson, Any Day Now. The beach receding into the distance. 

The fog rolling in, above and under the boardwalk.

One day, perhaps, finally dissipating. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic was so much fun to write, but it's been even more fun reading all ur wonderful comments and support <333 love u and thank u so much for reading
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sunsburst) or talk to me on [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/sunsburst)!! peace out stay groovy!!


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